sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat

“water clings to my wrists. it has been my fragrance since birth.”

I wish we could spend July by the sea, browning ourselves and feeling water-weighted hair flow behind us from a dive. I wish our gravest concerns were the summer gnats. I wish we were hungry for hot dogs and dopes, and it would be nice to smell the starch of summer linens and the faint odor of talc in blistering summer bath houses... We could lie in long citoneuse beams of the five o'clock sun on the plage at Juan-les-Pins and hear the sound of the drum and piano being scooped out to sea by the waves.

“I am a dream swallower, and I poison myself. I have a palate for rare, erratic impulses.”

“Calm and queenly, comes the summer nymph, July—crowned with azure, clothed with splendour,”