and the wind gathered the leaves as a mother gathers her children and blew them irrevocably, lovingly, into the haunted wildness

The only sound is the audible record of her thrusts as she becomes wetter. Her beautiful voice echoing in his head, they share the sounds of their amorous flesh moving in unbridled rhythm.

It was a hideous ancient thing that stood on tiger feet in the middle of the floor. Like a showpiece. And he did enjoy showing it. He would bring his friends upstairs to the master bathroom so that they could admire the monstrosity while he told them the whole long boring story of how he’d gotten it at an estate sale in Hollywood. Some bimbo actress from the silent-screen days had supposedly slit her wrists while she was in the thing. ‘Cashed in her chips,’ Harold liked to say. ‘In this very tub.

My mother was the bringer of storms. The dark and the light. Death and rebirth. She was as dangerous as she was beautiful as she rode the lightning. Once a potent force of nature she had the nerve to look down on us from those lofty heights.