Manhattan by day, for evenings. The ashen ambit narrowly above, from building to building. Lower than usual, descending. The closing of a great used curtain.
The grey comforts. There is the coming darkness, the silencing. The gentle diffusion reduces all attentions, all directions, to earthly ones. There is a moistness in the air. It is an island only in fact.
It was a day lived from memory alone. The city hushes. He had forgotten to tell her that. It was all a soft partial sky, the soft music of lights dancing. The mist.
Nothing in the city was too far away now, nothing too close.
There was a taxi. A trafficless burst. A smooth yellow dash. We chatted lightly in the back, kissed once and then again. We were there to meet a friend. The sister or some friend of another. It was a commitment that could only be vaguely resisted, not argued. Softly opposed but never fought.
The streets had emptied. The cries and screeches of the city faded, heading on towards the pacific.
They were all drifting into hushed entranceways, into lobbies and upwards into buildings known and unknown. Bars and restaurants glowing with diversion.
We sit at the hotel lounge and listen, chat. Islands of laughter growing around us, replacing the routine.
We decide against dinner. Drinks. drinks.
Later we walk home. We pass the cathedral on 10th St. and look upwards again.
The city in supplemental silence. The city succumbs.
There must have been keys used. There must have been stairs. The door closes. We undress standing together, facing. We kiss in the dark, we kiss again. We hold one another's arms. We each place a knee on the bed as we fall. The parachute opens. We drift.
The sun comes through sheets at daybreak, the breeze. I open my eyes to the diffused unbroken light. The sheets are glowing, luminous with the new light. The morning of day already fast around us, growing.
.
