For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror

The book was gasping for breath when I picked it off the shelf. In the alleys, where the words scrunch like gravel under the feet and the musty smell of ages weave a maelstrom of questions at every step, where bereft of human caress books were dying- letters hemorrhaging from the wounds of time; had I come searching for the fugitives of my memories. Rustling pages whispered, of the rustling leaves. Rotting ink had diffused like the blotting pigments, of summer. Petals had curlicued and had become the alphabets. The flower had died and had become the book.

In the moments before waking  when the city was weaving dreams of concrete, the tide of the night receded and left in its wake creatures of the deep, forms from the void. On the sidewalk an oyster lay unopened, preserving a drifting dream from a land alien. The blanket in its filigree had trapped the night just enough for a home to thrive. A sardine gasped for breath in the last puddle of darkness on the pavement. Through the rancid stream of traffic had she waded in the night to sell the ministrations of love, And now she was exhausted. Two stumps for feet, the Barnacle,  clung to the uninviting shop front. The incoming tide of day, promised salvation. For with the alms from the gratuitously generous could he unleash the stupefaction of the night,  stacked in the bottles behind him.