Now here he was: sartorially, facially and interpersonally sharpened; every inch the beatific boffin.

Cloying tendrils of mist searched the city like skeletal fingers reaching deep into crevices, hoping to capture the elusive prey needed to satisfy gnawing hunger...

Her long platinum blond hair fell in loose waves past her shoulders, with a few black peekaboo strands. She wore a black minidress and combat boots.

The trees were like black skeletons reaching to the sky, pleading with their bony arms for the sun to get stronger.

It was agreeable to her, the smell of tobacco. It was part of her knowledge of his body. It was the aura of the man, a residue of smoke and unbroken habit, a dimension in the night, and she lapped it off the curled gray hairs on his chest and tasted it in his mouth. It was who he was in the dark, cigarettes and mumbled sleep and a hundred other things nameable and not.

We emerged onto the ruined street, where gaps showed in the rows of buildings like missing teeth

And then there was a moment of silence. As if time was taking a deep breath.

What a hard thing it is to write of love! Easy enough to describe the burning brand of lust, or yearning of infatuation, that yearning that can never be assuaged. But love! There is only the word, and the knowing it.

Pretty as a painting, but thorny as a rose.

... in my spell of uncertainty as to where I was...