Melting

A story began to formulate in my distracted imagination, though I kept up the pretense of walking leisurely beside her in silent calm. In this story, our long winter coats talked in hushed voices, and the moon watched us with a dilated pupil. We had mislaid our mouths at a Surrealist exhibition at the Louvre.

"And then," I said aloud, "the blocks of the sidewalk unearthed themselves and formed a rough staircase, and we began to climb toward constellations that described lost fish in prehistoric oceans."

"You're nuts," she laughed.

But at night's end she still kissed me like sun on a leopard.