The painter tears canvas bandages with his teeth, plaster dust mingling with gasps as they fall onto the Persian rug. His posture-dabbing titanium white over the old scar above her pubis-resembles restoring a crackled glaze porcelain. Moonlight sifted through ventilation ducts is ground into powder, until the taut curve of her calf splashes ultramarine, scorching charred traces across 18th-century warp and weft.
The floor-to-ceiling window is fogged. A young boy traces the curve of my collarbone with his violin bow, rosin powder dancing in sunbeams. He says the G string's vibrations resemble a lover's shiver, yet I hear leather shoes clicking down the corridor. The velvet piano bench devours every sigh, while the margins of sheet music bloom with lip prints waiting to be erased.
Waking up to realize it was all a dream—how infuriating.
