Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch (trans. Gregory Rabassa)

I’m terrible at parties, secrets, and money. I want my stars sexy: fast light that’s prophetic. No nonsense about physics, refraction, past light.

Even in Barcelona, I can’t turn a bike. I let you change my mind: free will and wet hair. One night, I let you pour white wine. I drink its aghast light.

Happy now? We’re both like this—full of risk and nowhere to put it. We sidle up to strangers with dry cigarettes and ask, Light?

I want small churches and noisy continents. I want you. I want you better. I want you moved by what moves me: God, glass, light.

You like the line about men bored with beautiful women, as though boredom’s the prize, as though those peonies weren’t a gaslight.

It’s O.K. I play dumb. I count codes under my breath. I circle you like a devoted planet. I see the whiskey bottle. I forecast light.

I’m a better gambler than wife: the house fills with music and your singing. Dear enabler. Dear truce. I know you see the moon’s steadfast light.

Vincent van Gogh ~ Garden of a Bathhouse, 1888