Aristocracy's endless feuding. An efficient and respectful bureaucracy, within the scheme of things, infinitely greater than the lower class their countrymen.
God, how strange and awful. Did I forget he died? Years after I'd seen him, I found myself thinking of him in early morning dreams, I kept returning to certain figures, ghosts, details I barely thought about at the time.
Fuck you. Fuck you good. You think that was blind? Look at what we used to say —hello, how are you, hi, hello— This was a world I wasn't ready to enter. Something about the look and touch and function of the thing was alien and unsettling. I was barely human.
Day Twenty-Three warnings for mentions of prostitution
Spoiler
Sightless eyeballs, shrunken and fixed upon their temples, their doors forbidden. Children brandishing garlands, perfume, whores —good ones, too— the spirit of modern-day merriment.
He had taught his countrymen, young predators of instinct and impulse, to endure one-another. The natural restlessness of youth needed reform, so was her fearsome reputation.
Today the city is the smell of falafel and lamb kabob, cigarette smoke on the subway platform. It is a hot, humid train with fogged windows, empty cups on the sidewalk, and day-old scaffolding somehow already plastered with graffiti. It is a woman with a lipstick-stained surgical mask, and coughing so loud you wish you were wearing a mask, too.
