Off the balcony a sparse tree echoes the truth of a new season. Gray doves leave the branches and land on the street, on an iron slab that plinks with their steps. I've been beneath that ferrous sky with Victor's son, Lhaysek, a veteran of Afghanistan, the Soviet equivalent of Vietnam. They taste good but the colors are bad for me. On his left hand, two missing fingers.
Memory is a fiersome thing, a firestorm against the coldest heart.
In the interlude where narrative paused, the writer gripped her collar, turned it up against the chill. You want to run away. Babushkas shuffled the street above. Bells rang on bicycles. A man halted to light a cigarette, his match falling like a yellow seed to the dank dirt below, where I found myself sweating and touched, as I haven't been touched before.