How the Night Ends

by Elodie Rose Barnes

Frank Weichkopf

Silk slides over legs, over bar stools, over taxi seats. A good girl never goes out without stockings.

Patent leather dances with velvet swirls; the intricate patterns made by pointed toes and heels leave fleeting traces, sparklers along the floor.

Darkness caresses bare shoulders and flirts quietly with hips. It will be rags by the end of the night, as dawn rips its way through satin and lace.

Mother-of-pearl nestles in curls. The last on and the last off. The only witness when the matching necklace is torn from milk skin.

Lipstick drips words like champagne bubbles. Blood-red. They fall, and linger; too much for the pavements to hold. Pools of them seep into the sunrise sky. Yesterday’s light becomes nothing but a shadow, and the streets add another name to the roll-call of the lost.

Somewhere, a heron rises from the mist on the river.

---

Elodie Rose Barnes is an author and photographer. She can usually be found in Paris or the UK, daydreaming her way back to the 1920s, while her words live in places such as Ellipsis Zine, Bold + Italic and Spelk. Current projects include chapbooks of poetry & photography inspired by Paris, and a novel based on the life of modernist writer Djuna Barnes. She can be found online at http://elodierosebarnes.weebly.com and on Twitter @BarnesElodie.