Week-old tulips, ones she'd bought for his birthday, gape in the crystal bowl atop the desk. They are scarlet, yet not as scarlet as the bouquet mantling his shirt. Nothing again will ever be real, she murmurs. I am beyond the rainbow. Today is yesterday inside out.
Tomorrow is upside down.
I was young, and now I am old, because there are holes in him. If there were holes in time, I would inch backwards with him, babe in my arms, seal them over, lullaby us into yesterday. Or I would tell him how the wizard told the sultan the earth is held up on the back of a giant elephant, and the elephant stands on the back of a giant turtle. For them, the past was always overture.