Distances

I always walk down familiar streets at night. I do not let time tiptoe past me unnoticed. I pace slowly, observantly with the steady climb of the moon. The same drooping streetlights, the same tarred roads, the same bougainvillea tree round the corner everyday, swaying to the same song I always stop to listen.
How well I know the song, how little I know the songbird. Cruel is her beautiful ignorance. Does she not know that her song brims over, past her bolted windows and strays into my yearning arms? Does she not know that though it tears me with pain, it still engulfs me with the wonder of the cool spray of a freshly broken wave?
Does she not know that her song makes me forget my way home through familiar streets...

Suddenly

It sounded like the sizzle of water on a hot pan. That's the sound which escaped her when something suddenly scalded her. A short breath sliced by teeth. A sharp edged whisper. The tenor of a sudden downpour. The wake of distant anklets.
The dark smear of the rogue flame on her skin had startled her. Worry paved quick creases on her face. The whole world seemed aflutter at her wincing.
She then sighed and all was calm. The calm of scattered beads which have rolled away and found places to hide.