1941

I wore a large brim hat like the women in the ads. How thin I was: such skin. Yes. It was Indianapolis; a taste of sin. You had a natural Afro; no money for a haircut. We were in the seedy part; the buildings all run-down; the record shop, the jazz impeccable. We moved like the blind, relying on our touch. At the corner coffee shop, after an hour’s play, with our serious game on paper, the waitress asked us to move on. It wasn’t much. Oh mortal love, your bones were beautiful. I traced them with my fingers. Now the light grows less. You were so angular. The air darkens with steel and smoke. The cracked world about to disintegrate, in the arms of my total happiness.