Pistachio Powder

Her breath was fragrant with pistachios. She had been shelling them for what felt like hours. My job was to mash them into a fine powder to help her create a sweet concoction of her own invention. Pistachio, rose water, cardamom, those were the main notes of today’s sweets whose fragrant harmony would tint my blood and travel all over my body painting every cell wall with crushed velvety reds and creamy bright greens. Long after we had eaten them, sitting in the hot steam of the shower, we would glow with these smells and even hours later as we slept I could perceive it in the heat between her breasts and palms of her hands.

Because my senses could not let go of her smell I stayed half awake, half in sleep and dreamed that I stood above a blue canal. Blue because it reflected a neon sign, the neon sign was really the entire sky deciding in a short moment if it was day or night. It was a blue green yellow bright as the second after a trumpet blasts loudest note and the pause in a deep sigh when the chest begins to fall.

Again, this reiterated in my mind:

Every second a chest rises and falls,
Every evening a color announces the moment between day and night,
Somewhere, a trumpet blasts.

I awoke suddenly to the sound of my neighbor’s sobs through the bricks of my apartment wall.