The Erosion Archives
Kimi K2 (0711) and Davinci 002
The fluorescent hum had a color, she realized, and it was the yellow of old teeth. She stood at the platform's edge where the tiles gave way to gravel, and no train had come for forty-seven minutes according to a clock that might have been wrong. The tunnel breathed warm air that smelled of rust and something sweeter, almost like overripe fruit. Behind her, the stairs led up to a street she could no longer quite picture. She stood still and already she could feel herself eroding back into the cold. When she made her way back up to the street and crouched beneath a streetlamp, she did not bother to look at herself as she checked her pockets. Instead, without acknowledging her own existence, she pulled out a leather case which proved to be filled with the
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Dr. Hildebrandt’s Remedy 69 bones of dead roses in shades of pink and white. The tiny things were disintegrating into tiny dust particles swirling about each other in the case. But when she touched one of the bones, it moved with a deli ca te little jitter, something like a nervous fawn. Liz scraped a limp, worn petal from the bottom of the case, then blew a tiny puff of moisture into the center of the bony stem and held it to the glowing device. The bone shivered for no more than a second, and then all sprig ney hope was gone because the glowing device seemed to have evaporated all the water from the bone, leaving only freckled bone dust falling to evaporate away into the wind and air. Liz felt about in her pockets until she found a match. She used it to light another bone, and she inhaled the scent of its tiny petals. This time the bone hid its bone-glow in the dark folds of the petal as she held it to the glowing device. She massaged it between her fingertips until the glow was gathered in her fingers, then used her knee to take a seat on the curb. She held her fingers to her face and inhaled the hint of rose petals that hugged the air. It was a lovely way to waste time, she thought. Before long, the taste of her own parched mouth forced her to gingerly touch her teeth with her tongue. They were long and chicklet shaped and very yellow. She threw the match to the ground and ground it out on the soles of her shoes. Then, without bothering to get to her feet, she brushed some of that evaporative bone dust from her pants. A copy of Bleu-Verte'S L'Aisance Marinar ended up spread across the parking lot in front of a van. Liz's teeth her facade of defacto politeness, she ignored the confoundment and continued moving. The plant sat high on a dune just a tiny bit eroded by the heavy salt wind. Rolls of little balconies curtained down the stark white walls. The
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70 Ari Berk canvas was soft from age, but the scent of the venue on that day, the scent of Hamilton's trail mix and peppered Cheetos, of ink and tobacco, of lust stirred beneath her feet and suggested that the timelessness of this torn kingdom lay heavy in the air. It all felt so very alive. She moved around the site so as to count colorful squares of canvas that, without the watermarks, were assertive◆ About the ending
❧ About the title