World Traveller Susan Culver // USA
He sent her letters from Venice, the pages smelling of twilight in a crowded cafe. He told her, then, of the way the candle birthed its own glow and that the glow itself was a marvellous thing: how it breathed along the wall and on the tips of all the silver. That it kissed the heads of the unaware, its lips once settling on a smooth, bald brow and, again, within the silk secret of some raven river which had sharp eyes to match. He sent her letters from Vienna, and he told her how the paper seemed so dull in comparison to his window scene. That, when the storm finally broke, the sky jewelled the streets below. Such a breathless coronation of blue, he wrote. He sent her letters from Vatican City, having written from the gardens, from the feet of those stone and lesser gods and he wrote that he remained at odds with the man he’d become. And when he closed his eyes, he could still see America: that slow smile, those dancer’s thighs. Even here, he could feel her rising half the world away and how she seemed to take the bed-warmth with her. He sent her letters from Valencia, splashed by the cool of the Turia fountain so that the ink blotched sweet across the page. And he told her that spring was catching on here, like logic. Like chai. And that all he really wanted to say was that he was making his way home.
150 //Frame Lines edition #8