Red Love

Pale as the moon she strolls through the streets of Avignon the sun burnishing the red hair yet somehow it don't eat at all the pale skin upon her shoulders. Beer in hand I stroll the pavement behind her, ignoring all the skinny seedy children breaching my sanctity with their cut-off shorts, brains, leers.

She turns right, into the eglise de Maria, a mediæval construction with heavy rock doing a better job than my hotel's air-conditioning. A few pews behind her I sit and pray, watching for the tell-tale signs. She takes out a cigarette and smokes.

There being none else in the church I walk forwards and stare. She sees me and, gulping, offers me a cheeky one from the pack that the bribe might buy my silence.

Later, as the cigales cricket into the doom, she kisses my sweated neck and leaves my rented appartement, headed back to her pew. A flash of bronze hits the ceiling through the shutter slats, I turn over and dream some more.

I've seen her since in other cities, but Avignon was the night it began.