angelo badalamenti

you're sitting naked on your bed. notes from lost highway drift around the room as if you're in the grand elevator of a hotel of marble and gold trimmings. you lift the mirror up to your face and when you see your own eyes looking back at you, you wink to your reflection to return the same. the brisk washington fall air is carried through your window, and your flesh rises and shakes with interest in the spirit carried with it. you balance the mirror in your left hand and bring the straw to your nose with your right. exhaling another measure of music drifts by. inhaling your eyelids swell closed. you heavily plop your head against the head board of the bed. the embellished gypsy shall draped on the head board is pulled down around your shoulders with your head sinking into it. like you're plunged into water backwards, you can feel water cradle your neck first. the drifting acid jazz brings you back to your room again, rather than allowing you to be completely submerged in your minds puddle. the girl in the chair exhales a sigh of disgust, the record needle picks itself up and she lights the cigarette. its base stained red from her lips. "I feel sickly alive tonight," she manages to escape from her mouth, her lips still clasping the cigarette. You look at her from the corner of your eye, one eyebrow raised and your lip lifts with the muscles in your face expressing the disgust she brings splits open your mind's landscape with her subtle voice.