Illusions

I stand up, my knee scraped, another stocking ruined. I rub my eyes. Was it really Paul, or simply my phantoms taking form?

Dawn is still a dream away. The newsstands are shuttered; the street’s empty except for skittering rats and weary nighthawks like me.

Soon the sun will rise and smile on the flowers. They will look up with open faces and smile back. But I remember trembling roses, their thorns no match for the monstrous mechanical birds we’ve created. London filled with rubble; Dresden destroyed. The giant cloud like a ferocious radiant rose, rising high in the sky, an Angel of Death that proclaimed, “for beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.”

If only I had known. I thought we were seeding a garden, but it was a mirage. And now I’m haunted by ghosts and the figment of love.