Angled Asylum

There is, of course, something to be said of the feeling of a hand clutching the face.  Fingers spread over fingers and eyebrows, a thumb almost touching an ear but failing to. The meat of a hand pressing into your mouth.

There is something to be said about this.

Tell me about the last time you had lipstick spread across your face. Who was the original wear-er, and why, please tell me, was it spread?


(pause)


Last evening I had eleven minutes before I had to board a train. It was rush hour.  He was in his high towered office that looks over downtown from a middle height. 

"I'll run,"  he said.

He did.

He met me as I sat perched upon a ledge that long outdates most of this city.

"Let me walk you underground."

The thing about rush hour is that, while everyone is running and walking everywhere, no one is running up that winding staircase that has at least five flights of stairs. No. Not when there as escalators. Elevators. This collective laziness and expediency offered stone-stair isolation between the third and fourth flight, and it was only a split second after I turned that sharp corner, that my spine was pressed up against its wall.

Here is to expediency and the pain and pleasure of ninety degree angles.



k.


(image: Florence Henri, Portrait, 1928)