I imagine that it's morning in Paris, and that the wet spokes of humid bicycles are shuddering damp cobbles like cinematic sprints of spasming light, a sunlit accordion staggering about with sand spread under his morning eyelids.

I love the keys. I saw lanky blue shadows smearing their sweaty dawn palms against my skin as I passed, passed, pressing mortal shades into me, into me.

Paris reclined, and she was naked and thorny against the hills, she was the crown of pale alabastered flesh, she was the cigarette smoke sliding against heaving ribs. Paris was born for morning, I said, because the fire of dawn was meant to salt the wounds of her reckless night.

Go on, Paris said, her lips against my earlobe, and I swam through her tiled doorways, where women with long skirts swept the heedless stairways and closed their eyes slowly when the city's morning struck them blind. Iron trellises peered like ashes from the balconies, and I knew that they cupped the remains of yesterday's midnight under their fingernails.

In the ash, I saw Paris glory in the morning.