mirrors in the ceiling

In every calendar month there is a day for flourishes, waltzes, and the sensitive awakening of skin worn without sleep for forty-eight hours. This is the anniversary of every frolic we have ever had, dousings in snow, sand, prismatic washes; in its honour we hold secret breath in our lungs. Cities like this one were born to fly. Bomber waves coax bedrock to dislodge as though Beirut were a wishbone in the throat of the Mediterranean. Mist is shrapnel. Flags shred beleaguered by the ambience, tricolour textile splitting like crusts on fresh loaves. This city was not made to be lashed to a calendar, nor you, its queen of spades. Dig up the cliffs one by one, your chance has come. Collect our days of celebration and never mention it, until the day you play a devastating sequence, your hand a royal flush of unfulfilled dances, your wispy breath laced with fragments from the shore.