Part One

We were walking that wooded trail when you heard him call from the trees.
I think you heard his voice before I did.
A too small man with a pin striped coat, he said,
“You two have anywhere to be just now?”
We said no and followed him into the overgrowth,
Through that brush for what seemed like days.
We walked until thick black day turned to thin blue dusk,
Until that cold forest turned to hot desert,
And we walked all through that night.
Our feet became bare and our steps were warm in the sand.
The air became sweet as we breathed in more slowly.
“Here we are.” Said the too small man “Welcome back.”
Our eyes fell upon a grand camp.
We walked between the tents on a path that disappeared in the distance.
He led us past Jesters and Apothecaries,
through lion tamers and blind magicians.
We walked past a girl with violet skin and emerald eyes, she planted a kiss on your smiling lips.
A gray crone fed us apples when we found her lonely campfire.
"Welcome Back." She said.
I ate and drank and watched flames dance off your lips.
You said, “Tell me something I've never heard.”
I said, “you remind me of bicycles with broken spokes.”

Autumn

The porcelain bathtub finished filling with hot soapy water.
The woman stepped delicately over its curled rim, and grasping either side with a
perfectly manicured hand, sank herself down deep into the warm froth.
Her head reclined back, against the end of the tub opposite the gleaming, metal faucet.
A Seafoam hued towel lie rolled up at the base of her neck, and she reclined her head
back to let her eyes fix upon the vaulted ceiling. She wore her brunette hair twirled
loosely, and clipped up high on her head to avoid dampening it.
She was the very picture of modern comfort and contentment.
The bathroom she found herself in had been custom designed to her specifications.
Everything was of the newest model and highest quality. A hospital-clean palette of the
starkest white and stainless steel.
It was the very picture of class and sophistication.
The woman and her evening bath, together they were high-end perfection and there was
only one thing which suggested otherwise.
Only a small detail to suggest she felt anything but complete serenity. Something which
might hint to the fact that, there, right below that serene and polished visage,
a panic began to take hold.
Her hands. They still gripped each side of the tub. The delicate blades of each long
fingertip, curled over the sides, were becoming inflamed with tension. Her long nails
were pressed impossibly hard and bending back from their pressed position against the
tubs exterior. She kept holding on; it was the only thing about her that showed ill ease.
She held on so tight while the florescent lights above her put everything on display.
During the day it was easy enough to hide. Flesh-toned nylons not only slimmed
the leg, but also hid the shadows of viscosity that had begun to form on her calves. Their
high waste helped to flatten her stomach. Her abdomen had been so toned in her
twenties. Even into her late thirties it had been presentable enough. Now it began to
pucker and dimple. She glanced to the pile of clothing on the ground. Her black silk
blouse which fit forgivingly about the arms. Once so taut and lean, they now hung
heavy with adipose tissue that quivered under her skin whenever she moved them. The
black pencil skirt which lengthened her frame so dutifully. In youth she boasted sheer
fabrics that clung to every sharp and scintillating curve. Now she could only hide her
widened hips under its thick lining.
Her skin flushed red with heat from the water, the high temperature thinned her blood
and caused her heart to pump it faster and harder through her veins.
Nothing made her feel more exposed than this. Sitting under these lights she saw every
year that had passed. Every moment that had brought her from the bright tempting
maiden she was, to the wasting, aging, crone she could feel herself mutating into. Naked
in the water the woman hugged the ashen skin of her upper arms. She contemplated
herself. Her eyes. Those eyes that once flashed with wild confidence, now sat gaunt and
tired, behind thinning and papery lids. Her teeth were thinning. Her skin was drooping.
She gasped at the helplessness of age. Once she felt that sickness was something foreign.
Now she knew all to well that there was carnage right beneath her flesh. Pulsing,
bleeding, stinking viscera was right below her surface.
Her heart palpitated with that reality.
Because here, in the bathroom where everything was porcelain and tile and grout and
metal, where every surface was cold to the touch...here death seemed so close. Too close.
The woman closed her eyes and imagined a cold shop window at the end of a long and
lonely gravel drive. She saw herself walk towards it and peer deep into its dark insides.
There she could see him stare back at her. She watched him step closer and breathe one
moist, fetid breath onto the other side of the pane, watched as he traipsed his bone finger
through the fog that had formed to spell a message.
“Soon.”
His face contorted then into an awful grin. He threw his head back to cackle 
and the hollows that were his eyes told her that she too would come to him.
The woman awoke with a start and she was there inside her tub. Its water grown cold
and greasy now, as soap pooled in an oily shine on its surface.
She lifted her pale body out of the water and left the wet on her skin. She was shaken.
She dressed her frame in a white cotton robe and exited the too bright room to pad
silently down the low-lit hallway. To the cabinet under the kitchen sink, where she swept
aside the many assorted cleaning agents to hastily reveal the pack of Camels.
She thought about the loving man who lie sleeping in the bed they shared.
Quietly, so as not to wake him, she removed a single cigarette and put it to her lips as
she struck a match to light it from the book she kept tucked into the cellophane. She
inhaled deeply, and shook the match out with her right hand. The woman slid open the
glass patio door and leaned against its frame before exhaling smoke out over the cold
dark.
Grazing her eyes across the well-kept golf course, she mused on how they had paid an
extra fifty-thousand for the condo with this view, instead of the less expensive option a
street over in the same gated community.
She unclipped her hair and combed through it with her fingertips as it fell to a rest
around her shoulders. The once deep, thick, brunette, was now salted with gray.
The woman took a long, contemplative, drag from her from the cigarette.
She had her hair colored and retouched constantly to ensure that those strands remain
hidden. At two-hundred dollars a pop, the effect was aesthetically identical to the nine
dollar boxes of color she used to purchase before she met her husband.
Since their first encounter he had purchased anything she could ever need, or want for.
Every unnecessary medical procedure and exotic beauty treatment which promised
youth eternal.
And that's exactly what he couldn't buy for her. What no one could have for themselves.
Not with his wallet, and not with his love, what she wanted was time without end, and
he couldn't buy her that.
She exhaled a last tendril of smoky breath. It was fully into Autumn now. She had
nothing to do but watch. Each brittle leaf would surely fall, one by one as the days
inevitably passed.
Day by day they would come to rest on the soil beneath the trees.
A promise that winter would come soon enough.
The woman bent down to extinguish her cigarette beneath a small, empty flower pot
next to the sliding door. She left it there with the others.
She had better get going to sleep.
The morning would be here soon enough, and she should be up early to meet it.