[thisislife]

The man lay beside his buyer, staring into the leaky blue of a stranger’s eyes. His own were as pits. He had discarded himself on the floor, the rumpled pile a monument to defeatism, a shell split of itself. He was tender. “So, what exactly do you do?” His buyer asked, reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind the man’s ear. He closed his eyes – I am of stone – and smiled weakly. He heard himself say some vague thing to which his buyer responded with a sickly rattle. His teeth, the man thought, they must be coming loose. His buyer shifted forward in a long drawl; his stubble scraped slightly against the man’s cheek. His breath filled his ear. “You don’t say.” Amidst his revulsion the man felt himself nod. The stars outside were coming loose. The steady gyration of the earth was grinding. The falcon could not hear the falconer, if only for a little while. The moon swayed in its path and danced queasily in the night; then his buyer shut the blinds and there was nothing left save for a darkness too long.