'Pianoforte Riff' by Salvatore Difalco

The eye looks out the window. It’s still free to look. Certain skies force the issue. Their blue, their soaring blue. But this is not what drives the contemplation. A ball of red suspended over the traffic of sunrise promises sport and possible violence. The trip itself is a kind of death. There goes another one. There goes another. One wonders what they have in common, these ill-fated travellers. Maybe they suffer the blues. Maybe they have never committed themselves to a worthy or unworthy cause. Maybe they have wearied of themselves, wearied of the music they play each morning, wearied of the slogans that corner their thoughts. All of it comes off too soft for my liking, a chamois cloth. You can roughen the surface of the day by rubbing it with sandpaper, I’ve found. Then it will properly hold the colours you apply. For now I rub my eye until it aches. I don’t know if this is punishment for looking out when the other eye is blind. In certain tellings, that could be the eye that gave offense, the one that saw the naked truth spread her legs and motion for her lover. A pianoforte riff would fit right here, or a piccolo trumpet blast. Within this speeding head, no time for doubt or self-reflection. The intensities are what they are. Living is combustion after all. Dousing the fire would kill it. Knock on wood. Am I still asleep? And then the blueblack pigeon lands on the balcony and you feel less alone than you have for a year. What would it be like to effortlessly land on a balcony? Hoping not to scare away the bird, the eye pulls back and rests upon a mirror, gold deep brown fringed with black and sad.