Faded Houses Green

The memory began to stir, the cattails along the lake shore.

The memory unfurled, Papa’s flag of permanent defeat. The memory began to sag, to sag under the weight of a hundred loves, a hundred deaths. The memory faltered, choked with the sludge at the heart of a dying archer (Cupid), diseased and then deceased. The memory was already forgotten by the time the lime trees see the dismantled image of an altar to the god of cloak and daggers, time better spent shivering from the cold of a forgotten memory remembered too late to save the way of all flesh-eating tigers of the fly-garnished scaffolding holding up the facade of the face that lunched with a hundred shipping clerks.

The cattails became coattails in the moment Harold dreamed them, and he lay awake dreaming forevermore.