When in autumn, the blood curls up softly. It settles to a slow silky jazz pace. Two saxophones and a muffled trumpet playing downstage, while a husky voice swims through cocktail glasses and spills out over table linens.

The O to my I is Sophia Kohn Heart: My tadpole, my motivator. The name itself rips me open with long dollar-store-red fingernails; sucks me dry, and then fills me with tears. Her water, her juice, is my Indo-European opiate. I’ll smoke her hot, until I’m cold dead.

This is late October, and we’re in the City. The City is upstate. We come here after the leaves fall because the streets are crackly and dynamic. Sophia and I stroll. We stomp and kick our way between the Old Town bars, bookshops, and lazy dance clubs. We sway with them all, but it is the Romanesque Cathedral she and I favor for its herb-infused drinks and swank-laden music. Shoeless.

Here in Midnight City, pumped full of sugary umbrella drinks and pillow mints from our recent hotel stays, my Lady and I roust like candied pigeons in a moonstruck garden.

Sophia slips her hand into my left jacket pocket for just one more sweet summer mint. She whispers into my ear, “The trombonist has a high-note hard on.” Sophia likes to parallel her language with her sexuality. And we dance shoeless.

– K. Shawn Edgar