She sees him from her window. He is a beautiful creature, a thing that will forever remain incomparable. Her fingers trace a path against the condensed glass, engraving a pattern that he shall not be privy to. It occupies her mind with fantasies of escaping her evaporated cage, or roaming illicit halls with her clandestine lover. It is he who she looks down upon and intoxicates her mind with. This pastime entertains her voyeuristic tendencies. She knows she will not by privy to his flesh, nor to his skin that radiates such warmth towards her cage. It remains encased in swathes of fabric, and the touch of another wandering hand. He will forever remain next-door, trapped in a lover's gaze.

It was stilted and jagged, a macabre dance that you chose to engage in without me. You waltzed to your own rhythm as I stared blandly, bared my teeth and blessed you with a grin.

My body accompanied your silent ghost as we moved as one, split by time. I stumbled as you committed to the steps, immersed in your own silent rhyme of steps and an effeminate grace.

Face flushed, limbs trembling, I spun alone, begging you to trip, to fall. It was my silent call to you, to hear my steps against the dull silence. You were receptive to nothing, consumed by a void and rendered useless by your macabre dance.

It was a messy little thing, dark and asphyxiated by hate. You thrived off of delicacy, legs spinning and body writhing as if it were an act of fate.

I was a casual bystander, struck by grief and my forgotten twirls. I saw you pause, step towards me and stare. Time had warped you with its woven, spun ribbon, and held you captive in a barren state.

But you were beautiful, a prodigy of leaps and turns.

Your arms reached out and gripped mine with fervour, a violent delight to behold.

We spun as arms flailed and as I twirled, you fell into a crumpled mess, a broken fold with no control.

I lay upon the floor, legs tangled by time's translucent ribbon. You waltz away, with Death as your partner. You dance into eternity with Her, heralded by your macabre dance.

The two appeared to be inconsequential when scrutinised. Two buildings bound by a structure that defied any concept of gravity. It was suspended there by a naïve practicality and voluntarily housed the Depraved and the Damned.

They were separated and compartmentalised by a system that they were not privy to. It was a common understanding between them that one such party was engaged in decadence and waste, whilst the other congregation were subject to a physical and moral decline. They would compete for dominance, dancing and writhing to their own dying orchestra.

These inhabitants had crafted the exterior of both buildings. They were deceitful shells. The occupiers of both structures preferred a sense of incongruity when transparent bodies floated past, the ones who had no ability to see past their subsequent thresholds. Their interest was not focused on those who shone as if they were a constellation.

Lights would entice the Damned during the dark hours, and mark the road for those who sought their services. It was a manipulative ploy for those who resided within the decaying walls, a design to lure and consummate with those who sought depravity. These individuals were the ones who thrived off of a decline of the soul.

The bridge always made itself welcome amidst the sombre song of laughter and desolate tears. Those who remained inside would press their faces up against the glass, condensation filling the windows with an opaque mist. Their fingers would cast marks in the steam: symbols of death incarnate, crude images or self-exploitation. It was enticement at its finest.

Their clever machinations were driven away by the presence of an external light source. The bridge became transparent, and had no place within a world that shunned the Depraved and the Damned. Their watchful eyes roamed until the dark hours granted them with its melancholic symphony of constellations, a corrupt moon and the lost souls who begged for a reprieve.

She knows she is characterised by displeasing textures. Her demeanour has been derived from an origin of melodic laughter, crooked nails and crippling waves of thoughts. She likes to entertain herself with the belief that her outward projection represents a sanguine yellow, but she knows it resembles a muddy orange.

Perhaps this image of her is a product of her playful hair. It spirals out of any constraints she imposes on it, and mocks her ability to control its descent. She is weathered and tired from her failed attempts. She can also blame it on the raised marks that cover her face. When darkness falls, she compares them to constellations. But the sun's bitter light exposes them for the blemishes that they truly are. The realisation always settles her back into a stupor of melancholy.

To ponder upon these things results in a tensing of her fingers and a twitching of the mind. Heat mottles her cheeks, and her breathing becomes disjointed. She is a twisted replica of paranoia and fear, and she despises how they have evolved and become an inherent part of her. It twists and grips her mind, simultaneously binding her lips and cracking her voice.

She turns to the pools of her eyes. Her final judgement. They are crystalline beings, clandestine and illicit. Foam roils, and threatens to burst out of their milky oasis. Light continues to radiate off of them, and the yellow morning light is reflected out of their depths.

It immersed itself into the world with a feeble cry, as if it were acutely aware of its vulnerability. The eyes were shut against the morning's pallid light. It unconsciously exacerbated the mess of a creature that lay in the comfort of straw and grass. Blood soaked its minute legs, and the fur was matted with texture from the mother's womb. The sight was garish, and it held no sentimentality or pride. It was another machination of life, a product of what was expected of the mother. The ewe flapped its bedraggled ears, bleating its sombre song of melancholy anticipation.

I would never willingly describe myself as conceited, or having possessed a quality so demeaning as arrogance. It was not within my character to inflate myself, or position myself upon a pedestal, but it appeared to me that the arts were capable of conjuring such a thing inside of me.

My ego thrived off of the unexpected attention that surrounded my quaint, minute portrait. It depicted a woman, slouched and parall to the curvature of the tree that she sat beside, with her hands cupping a slumped, sallow face. The brush strokes were tender, although the woman had been painted with malice within her eyes. I knew the deft flick of green to offset the shrubbery had been a delightful decision. Many around me praised me on my newfound craft, and it resonated well with me.

I was yet to see anything else that was tantamount to the painting I had created. A young woman, similar in age to myself, had entered something that was bordering between the abstract and a garish caricature. She smiled at me, and chose to wave. It was a mistake when it wasn't reciprocated on my behalf, and I gave her a saturated glare. Her hand was lowered, and she turned away, straightening her easel as she did so.

I wasn't expecting anyone else to approach me, but a hand touched my shoulder. It surprised me, and I didn't approve of the silent announcement. I turned around, and was met with the critical eye of an older man. He had subconsciously emulated the style of clothing as to which the woman bore in my painting, but that didn't detract him from scrutinising the brush strokes from a close proximity.

'It's rather charming, don't you think?' I said. He looked up from over his glasses, and I knew he was the embodiment of criticism from his singular gaze.

'I have to disagree,' he said pointedly. 'The woman's features are overly blended, and the background is too static.' His fingers gestured vaguely over the mottled hues of green and yellow. 'What, exactly, were you trying to create here?'

I paused, and deftly searched my mind for some justification. Although I shouldn't have to explain something so personal and beautiful as one's own art form, and he should be aware of that. 'I wanted to show the fragility of nature,' I said, with a profound ease. 'The woman and nature are at equilibrium with each other, do you see?' I mimicked his wandering fingers, and gestured to his reference point. 'To overly blend something shows a tenderness, a vulnerability. I believe it to be rather provoking.'

He scoffed, and removed his glasses from his face. It was weathered, and replicated a sculpture that had been relentlessly beaten down by time. It occured to me that he saw his age as an advantage, or as some leverage to hold against me when scrutinising my work. The thought didn't sit comfortably with me, and I waited for him to resume his criticism.

His eyes crinkled together as he looked at my painting. He held his fingers out as if capturing a motion picture, or gathering the proportions for a photograph. I noted that there was paint upon his hands. 'Your proportions are off. What did you use as your reference?'

'My mind,' I said. 'And I saw the subject in person, but she didn't know I was looking at-'

'You mean to tell me that you created this,' he pointed to the painting, 'in your mind?' He shook his head, and began to walk away. I wasn't content with the conviction he had used to declare my work void of technical accuracy, but verbally contradicting him was futile. I noted that a few spectators had gathered to watch our conversation, and my hands began to dig into the warm palms of my hand. It stung, although not as much as the resonation of the man's words within my mind.

A woman came up to me, and patted my shoulder with some sincerity. 'I think it's a very accomplished painting, sweetie. Don't be disheartened.' Her perfume was too potent for my liking, and the comment was rendered useless in comparison to his critique. I thanked her courteously, and emitted an artificial smile. She returned one with more sincerity than I could muster, and walked away with a painting under her arm. The gesture was appreciated, but it failed to compensate for my deflated mood.

Perhaps the painting was too devoid of life, or lacking in proportions. The more I chose to analyse it, the more undesirable it appeared to be. It didn't project the intended vulnerability I had seen in the woman. It dissipated into the hum and lull of the oppressive crowd. The colours were as bland as the community hall we were situated in, stripped of anything I had witnessed in the park. It wasn't executed well enough, or so the man had led me to believe.

I sat in the folding chair I had lumbered along with me, and tucked my feet up so that my knees were bent. My hand cupped my deflated chin, and I stared vacantly around. The chair propped me up against the man's gaze from across the room. Any praise was lost to me in those final hours. I occupied myself with the promise of a blissful breeze, the sun's tender kiss, and the consummation of grass with my fragile skin.

Acrid tangs asphyxiate casual passers by, their breaths oblivious to the poison that lingers in their periphery.

Lights blaze, a fantastical odyssey of red, yellow and the green of malice. They push and shove in the masses

until they become one collective throng. The heat from vehicles is tangible, tantamount to the anger that diffuses from bodies.

Buildings tower, a patriarchal display of metal and cladding. They loom over their people, a silent hierarchy of sound and noise

that fails to be punctuated by silence. The city never sleeps.

A hierarchy of sound and light that will never be dismantled.

The hues of the landscape were blazing. When mixed, they exuded a rich vitality that was comparable to the genesis of the sun and its light.

She didn’t come to comprehend this during her pilgrimage across the expanse of land. Her mind had become too abstract; all rationality had now been discarded in favour of the colours before her.

It seemed as if her odyssey to this acute corner of the grounds amounted to so much more than it had done before. These steps had been imprinted into the grass dozens of times before. Her prints had been displaced, forgotten and discarded.

But she wanted to walk this path one final time, to consummate with the rain and its subsequent myriad of reflecting colours.

Her feet implanted themselves into the sodden grass. An osmosis of sound diminished as she stood on the precipice.

The view struck her with a sudden discordance. It was a profound triptych, one that encased the autumnal trees in a haze of translucency. It hindered her sight.

A cathedral dominated this tableau. Its steeple loomed a few hundred metres to the right, but this was an estimate. The lines of the building were dripping, as if the architecture could not withstand the virility of the rain, and the potency of its smell. She briefly complimented the sight, but knew she would have to run in the membrane of water that was relentless in its intention.

She didn’t ascertain that her feet were muddy and sodden until she started to run. The grass sunk into her pores as the mud diffused into the peeling layers of her skin. It could have been a substitute for shoes, had she paused to contemplate the implications of her chaotic descent onto the cathedral.

The former pain of knowing this was her final descent to the building transmitted into a less tangible emotion. Her acute fear of being a failed creator for this fragile moment diminished any consideration for her current state.

The rain gently baptised her with its circumference of melancholy and guile. It appeared to be a fitting testament, a descent that would be tinged with the sombre song of sadness. Her hair began to strangle her neck, and clung to the damp angles of her face in an act of defiance.

They seemed to take on the role of being roots in search of nourishment, with her skin being their source of vitality. The water halted their personal endeavours to separate, and her hair was as much a dark sheet of unknown substances as the rain was.

The rich colours of the leaves evaporated into a blur of abstract landscape. Surrounding buildings and stones that she has failed to see dissolved into their concealed structures. The damp wood, the chipped stones that were tantamount to the fading glass panes that were delegated sparsely along the landscape. The rain diluted beauty, as did her desperate pursuit for the chapel doors.

Running, or the sensation of haste, brought skeletal things to the forefront of her mind. It exacerbated her fear of the water submerging her feet, and the chill that now gripped her bones. It was the impending knowledge of her desperation being futile that set her arms moving with a newfound rapidity, and her feet screaming into the face of the grass and mud. She sprinted the final few metres, and allowed the cobblestones to absorb the liquidised dirt from her feet.

Her breathing was hoarse, and devoid of the ability to converse with anyone. She knew her momentary pause would cost her, and those inside waiting for her final arrival, but the air granted her a sense of ardour that she hadn’t felt for days. It was a paradox - mental relief when those doors concealed the catalyst for her imminent decline once again.

With her legs now bent, and hands incapacitated in the cold, she contemplated straightening, but stopped. She felt the silent eyes of the cathedral upon her neck. It forced her to abandon her plans of remaining brittle in the cold, and to discard her capricious temperament. The bricks seemed to command a neutral balance between the emotions, but she knew she was not capable of submitting herself fully to these wishes. It was as if the building itself absorbed the refreshing bite of the cold, and digested it until it became something dislocated and unrecognisable.

The building was unrecognisable. It made her realise that her attempt to run here was futile, and the landscape in her mind had failed to translate into reality.

She didn’t approve of it, but lifted her body up to face the doors. They were representative of the solemnity that she would discover upon her descent down the aisle. Its wood was flecked with marks, the forgotten scars that places of such religious reverence chose to present to the world.

She believed it to be egotistical, a sign of pride, but a building was not capable of such intentions.

The rain blessed her with its stimulating embrace. The wind allowed the roots of her hair to settle. She was fulfilled enough with her pilgrimage to the cathedral, and the settling of her breathing, so she went to push the wooden doors open, but realised they were already ajar. Her fingers gripped the iron knocker, and pulled one of the doors towards her with a diminished sense of strength. The smell from the door resembled decaying wood, and the digested cold evaporated into the musk she had been predicting moments before. She walked in, with trepidation, and released the iron from her chilled fingers.

It wasn’t the landscape she had pictured upon the hill, but one of melancholic reverie. She allowed it to linger in her mind as the doors closed.

The trees marked her exit as they fell to the floor with a ferocious twirl, their hues spun and intertwined with the melancholy tune of the sky.

Red, rich. Streaming across a black sky, dark creeping in from all corners, an invite to play. To flee from the killer, a stark warning to run before his teeth maim, bite as the blood drips down her neck, warm. It’s wet, she imagines, an alluring mark of beauty, pain. She is desperate to bet on the malice in his eyes, a pledge of love turned dangerous, cold. Her body stops, still. He treads, snarling, eyeing up his prey. Greed. She smiles, a lilting thing, the pure will to feel his teeth sink in and pierce. The deed. A cry, red drops wilting down, a fresh bed for her to lie on, red, rich, dying. Dead.

It was meant to be melancholy, black, stained with the tears of those in mourning of the girl before them. She gave them a pact

to keep breathing, keep smiling through the pain but she didn’t. They gathered, feeling their acidic tears burning their cheeks, no gain

to be made from mourning the loss of her. They wanted to be grey, black, devoid of colour but a splash of red, orange. Bird.

Why was it here in this ceremony of death? A lone soldier pioneering for hope, for love, a new testimony

for this loss of life. A woman smiles from afar, the profound knowledge that the bird is hers, a lone gift travelled miles

to stain the portrait of grey and blue hues into something colourful, a new muse.