My beard was long, corners of my moustache caught in corners of my mouth, my hair bore burrs and briars from Camden Town, Notting Hall, Park Avenue and the lower East Side. These included one particularly fine example, like a perfect sphere of gold corral, or the ball of a mace, from Meshed. I wore embroidered silk. My left hand was adorned with rings, bracelets, the watch you gave me, the right bare save for a childhood scar that crosses my fingers diagonally through the knuckles, a healed knife wound. I hold my hand out before me and the blood fills my palm for hours.
Guilt expires, even as air congeals away from the mouths of the jets.
But I returned. Offered my passport to the man at the lectern there. It came apart like a newspaper in his hands. And I search silk pockets. Geometrical coins, coins without centers, coins with empty crosses for centers, milled, unmilled.