walking through the rain, the night around us like a cheap blanket. passing strangers' silhouettes against siding. my toes slide across the surface of my sandals.
we hopscotch our way into the bar, one leg bent behind like a broken flamingo. you pull your sweater off against the heat and despair. we are young and flamboyant; the audience is melancholy and subdued. i feel guilty for smiling, rubbing my happy existence in their long porcelain faces.
i talk through the first set, hardly glancing back as the lonely troubadour marches in place, out of time. he looks longingly at all of us, focuses on you and i because we are the only ones with courage to stand, the only ones willing to roar laughter and stories into the suffocating atmosphere. he tries to silence us with those eyes, but we brush them off like a bad memory.
they don't matter, because what matters is this moment, and not that one.
sitting at the table, we find ourselves surrounded by a harem on beautiful strangers. introductions were made, but i've never been one for names. each one simply became a shade of her or she, blending into the background din only to be coaxed from it by a clever statement or mythological sorrow. (i forgot her all, soon enough.)
always, it is never a night without the cards. small, crisp and compact deck of wonder, everyone gathered round in a hush... almost reverently, they disbelieve. this isn't real, i have to know. i cease to be another one of them, and instantly am turned to a gypsy. or, the doomed prophetess fulfilling the duty of damned messenger once again.
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