If Lenore was captured and taken to the future by a couple of child robots pulling a prank, this is what might become of her... she's practically a remote control car.

Am I a child for preferring my brainchildren lush?

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Darling, sunset the dog but beware of the dark, never the stranger, that follows.

Thank the moon while you’re gunning, that strange man with a rock for a face, that light, a face that never falls.

We all fall a little at night but rise a bit too. To look through the letters.

The letters are windows, love. And the buildings sky-high. Take a picture. Forget to develop the film. Set it on the windowsill in a bright room and lie on your side. You’ll see what I mean. Take a break. Read a newspaper.

This city is story on top of story with the moon for a headline. And we’re landlocked. A marshy island populated by letters and no bodies, telling me I’m out of touch, that I ought to get in touch with “moleskin.” They would be a great company to get in touch with, and great company.

I want to touch your moleskin. And have you touch mine. I can turn railway lines into fingernail imprints in skin, baby crescent moons, wrinkles on a face, and the moon doesn’t sink.

I scrape a mole off my face with a fingernail. I look on bodies as a foreigner. Only the moon can peel my nails off. Reveal the flecks of paint, the tiny figures and landscape paintings I keep underneath.

I point. It’s a skeleton. It’s just a map.

I fear I’m taking advantage of you,
The Madame

thankful your letter finds me after months of solace on the sea. what i wander for a coolin’ breeze, to wash some want off. alack, i’m still a fish, even in this fever. pray your walls’ve a more smoothin’ texture.

consider what we might call, to gods or friends, the words we defile with our mouths, they’re rocks, lady. might skip on the water but they will sink. might smash a window but do fall. i’ve tied them to my fingers, but i could bite the strings off.

tuesday i woke with hopes i was new. back on land and lookin’ for fresh sheets. when will i be drained. and leave the kids behind. well not today. but let’s sunset this bitch.

i’m gunnin’ for the moon tomorrow.

yours aflame,
harriett

You don’t know me. I think you don’t know me. I haven’t seen you, so I cannot comment here on your loveliness- I imagine that this would be the time, in a letter like this, to tell you how beautiful you are. But I can only tell you how entrancing your heavy words are, and the words of those strange, hushed men and women that live beneath this rooftop.

I can hear you all at night, and somehow the pulses of those unassuming customers seem to radiate up through the walls and to my perch with the birds, by the sky. Their heartbeats go faster. Their heartbeats are like morse code, when you start whispering. I keep trying to decipher it. I keep thinking there will be a message for me.

And I cannot quite say why, exactly, I want to tell you this; I know only that I could never tell you to your face, not when my birds need me. I cannot pay you for the words I hear each night, but I can keep the pretty gray pigeons that roost up here safe. Your brothel birds will be kept healthy and fed and I assure you they will make kinder sounds than the birds on any other rooftop. I assure you it will draw more men and women in. They will know you not only by the poets in their lace and silk and sheets of paper, but by the mean birds turned sweet.

It is the only way I can pay you. It is not much, but I have heard the words of each and every whore you house; and each of them deserves much more than I can give.

Forever,

Lenore di Sonna.

Should there be here below but a single old man, handsome and calm in the midst of incredible luxury, I shall be at your feet.

Should I have realized all your memories,—-should I be the one who can bind you hand and foot,—-I shall strangle you.

When we are very strong,—-who draws back? very gay,—-who cares for ridicule? When we are very bad,—-what would they do with us?

Deck yourself, dance, laugh. I could never throw love out the window.

An overcast morning in July. A taste of ashes flies through the air; – an odor of sweating wood on the hearth, – dew-ret flowers, – devastation along the promenades, – the mist of the canals over the fields – why not incense and toys already?

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.

The upland pond smokes continuously. What witch will rise against the white west sky? What violet frondescence fall?

While public funds evaporate in feasts of fraternity, a bell of rosy fire rings in the clouds.

Reviving a pleasant taste of India ink, a black powder rains on my vigil. I lower the jets of the chandelier, I throw myself on my bed, and turning my face towards the darkness, I see you, my daughters! my queens!