pretencious.

We kept at it though, this idle preoccupation of filling those lapses between explanation and breath with the clout of our words; a thick fistful of B-flat compliances. Between it, I noticed her nimble twiddle of forefinger readjusting her ring as if it were a cog, and if unloosened the entire mechanism of her countenance and petty smiles would become undone. So I grabbed at her hand and saw how the flush of her belated husband rose within her as white dahlias are dipped in stained water, watching as the color permeated through a single petal at a time from its stem. And her eyes quavered, and breath rolled off her as brume licking her chest, then waist and thighs smoothened as acid carves limestone. And for that moment, I saw it, a twirl of ivy unfurl itself from the cusp of her lip, and I clasped onto it with my teeth and hedged her any sense of social-repose, where she once could careen into words that fluttered as airily as her frilling ankle socks. Now I groped onto her as heavily as dark umber pulls on broth, so that inside the polite clamber of partisans and politicians we were as a ladle thick with soup, clumsily spilling onto the lampshade and Venetian carpets.