It is dark already, the desert is cold. I was dreaming of the girl, liquid and beautiful, an apparition emerging from the darkness. She paints her soul on the landscape. My eyes are open, chills in my fingertips and the earth breathing under me. 

She is shining. 

"I am like a shadow. I scrape my reality out of the dust and perceive what I can. I am the window.....you are the light." 

Her words are celebration and tranquility, a ghost of love created from my nighttime skies and precious visions. They resound at the zenith of my understanding. It is almost holy. 

We walk through the night and I hold onto her tightly, letting the fear ripple through me. Pictures unfold inside my head and I watch other people's dreams and other people's nightmares. I see a couple of newlyweds, driving into a slow war and depths their hearts will forget. She screams, he laughs, they kiss. They drive blind into the rest of their lives. 

I want to be them. I want to kiss the girl. I want to shoot the gun and bring down the stars. I want to make love to God with the top down. 

We are inside the fellowship of night, where violence can look beautiful in its silveredged robes.  

I realize she is real. Her flesh is soft and warm and gentle. I make words for her, I tell her I have nothing to say. I tell her,  

"I was waiting for you."  

I guess she understands. 

We keep walking. I take her to my apartment. I see the writing in lipstick on the mirror and remember we were here before. But it seems like forever has passed. I stare at her. I don't excuse myself, but she laughs anyway. 

"You're just out of touch," she says. 

The world speaks but I don't recognize him. 

I pull at my fat, wonder if she cares. Think about the gun and the demon lovers and the haunt of my dreams. The world wears plaid and a hat and belongs someplace else. She tells me to ignore it, that it will all go away. But I'm not sure whether I can believe her.  

The place looks dirty. Things could crawl in the corners. I don't like it here and neither does she. We climb on to the window ledge and slide over the moss, feet dangling high above the pavement. She rises to her feet and dances on the edge. I watch her, floating above the street and gliding on the wind. I wonder how it would feel to fall. 

My head is wrapped in snatches of the day, pieces of a song and possible worlds. She is breathing stories and the sun is dancing in her eyes. I lift my head and I can't look into them, but she just shines. 

The day dissolves, night dragging its elixirs through my body. 

Another moon has hung itself in the sky. Huge. 

I feel naked and cold beneath its jaundiced smile.  

I hate myself but I don't let it bother me. She tells me she loves me enough for the both of us. I wonder if I love her back. I gather thoughts, heaven rushing onto me. 

"We are the imagined and the pure." 

The road ahead is black, the hiss of an engine winding down to a snakes purr and hush. I can feel the dust and ice creeping into my lungs. Inside my head, I wander miles. I am in the mind of nature, I am sure. We, me and the earth are intimate and loving strangers in the timeless night. 

I watch her, wanting to kiss her but loading the rifle. She just looks at me and smiles.  

I want to see her dance, else it would all be just opium and shadowkisses, maybe only a dream splashing onto me, catching the outsides. 

She is too beautiful. 

And she has wings. 

The water swirls at the plughole and the night is alone with me.  

I sit down. Memories float around in the collected water and I crucify and recreate them. I try to remember the beautiful but my thoughts are dragons. 

My life spits itself out in quartets and jagged thoughts, translating into two dimensions. Too easily. Into a flat world, then a dot, a single point, a knifepoint, just a point, almost nowhere. 

I want to glue my day into a scrapbook and shut the cover. 

I am standing on tiny bits of rock and glass, staring at the sky. Its hot. The day reeks of sweat and burning skin, I wonder if its mine. I look for shadows but there is nowhere to hide. 

It is barren and beige. 

I wonder if she'll be long.