The young Russian woman curses me out in her mother tongue.
I do not understand the curses, but they wound me all the same.
I cast my eyes down, tear up, and walk away into the cold night.
The young Russian woman knows my name, therefore, she knows my innocence.
She knows it is beyond repair. She knows we both have blood on our hands, despite our big and brave words.
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The snow flurries dance in gyres and the angel sigh, for when the snow falls at night, they can clock out early, and ignore humanity and it's attendant ugliness.
I wonder if it ever mattered, if they ever came close to me, if the freckles on my nose and cheeks where really from the angels kissed me as I slept.
Did the heavenly host enjoy us, or resent us as spoiled and unjustly favored younger siblings, like Lucifer did in Koran?
A different Russian woman once kissed my chastely, dryly on the mouth. A fleeting school trip romance.
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The backwater of the dammed Tennessee river is black and cold, like the slick and thick oil that is the blood of the angels.
The fish are toxic, the water itself too, the mermaids of my youth, with their pale skin, dark eyes, and angry demeanor, long gone from the grotto under Henley Street bridge.
If I walk into the river it will not be baptism, no sins will wash away in already filthy water, for redemption is a scam to protect human and infernal demons.
The young Russian woman's curses are truer and kinder to me, than loving friends who never ask about the burns on my hands.
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