I remember stroking gilded roses with a shortness of breath.

There is something rather lyrical in the windows, reflecting light from monstrous cranes. I thought I saw Orion’s belt. I gulp the slush of frozen wine in the light emanating from the leftover tea lights we bought for our Sunday beach escapade to some man-made beach. A beach, a fabricated beach of reclaimed land and exquisite imported sand. A beach, nevertheless.

I remember the horizon laced and lined with the lights emanating from the lights of a thousand ships. If only the they had been mobilized and summoned by some legendary beauty by a jealous lover. Helen of Troy perhaps, with a beauty so ridiculous enough to move a thousand vessels. Oh Agamemnon, you foolish cuckold.

A sigh from the shortness of my breath extinguishes a tea light and I scramble to relight it with an adjacent candle only to be mildly scalded by molten wax.

I continue to scribble incessantly and ramble in a frenzied handwritten soliloquy. Reciting, with a pen, a monologue, nobody would bother to read. These pages might just end up feeding the famished flames. But to delete is an action of such convenience.

Slush wine melts from the heat of my tongue feeds my ataraxia. Bacchus, Epicurus, I
eschew all faith in an afterlife. This bottle fuels a fecund mind, orchestrated catharsis.

The sound of traffic, the scent of dried flowers. The waft of cigarette smoke. The dancing shadows from the gyrating flames are companionship tonight.

A night alone is like one hundred years of solitude.