She steps from steam trailing paint and petals—braids faintly damp, skirts rustling with birdsong. A sigh of cigarette smoke scents the air with jasmine. I don’t ask how; she just arrives—unannounced.
A shadow, and yet more real than myth. Her unibrow is like a sacred scarab; her eyes, rimmed in cobalt, carry secrets too heavy for self-portraits. I offer sugar. She declines, stirring memory instead.
What she leaves behind: the faintest smudge of vermilion, the soft clatter of wooden bangles, and a glance reflected that is not my own.
café window
the cooling curve
of my cup
writes haibun, tanka prose, and haiku. Her recent work explores the absurd, the surreal, and other oddities. Some of her work has appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online, Frogpond Journal, Haibun Today, and The Heron’s Nest.
