Grays #16 - Rivulets

  Copper and salt.  A curious taste.  A hint of ash, eyes cold and calculating; much calmer than the flock he keeps.  Is he to be my next brush?  
  My mind wanders these streets, eager and hungry.  Such rapture carries on the wind; a feather of rushing anticipation.  It flows on the wind, dampened by the rain, and settles on the rivers between buildings.  Ripples of displaced water, summoned by thousands of impacts, push and pull it down a meandering path.  It glides through whispers, steps, and regrets; gazes upon the secrets held in dark alleys and thrown down deep holes.
  A couple dashing past in the night, giggling under soaked parchment stacks in a stolen embrace.  They splash through rain hammers, and though she stammers, he insists upon another kiss.  The feather floats by, a single prying eye, and I linger just a bit longer on her neck.  
  A slight tug, a simple caress, I trace the line down her back, holding firm her hair and tasting her lips once before the gentle prick.  Warm rivulets of paint flow from her form, flooding my palms with inspiration while I hold her in the kiss.  Her body grows weak in my arms, unable to resist the warmth ebbing out of her.  She gives me her brush willingly, and I prune its threads with a simple snap, her hair cascading down with her frame, folding like silk upon the crumpled rags he brought to the symphony.
  I dip the brush, and in the strokes I see my mistress, soaked to the bone in wine and gold.  She turns and laughs, effervescent and heated, rising steam from the trenches and parapets of stone.  Taunting and challenging, she wields me.  I know myself to be a weapon in her eyes.  But it is My Beloved whose feathers I follow; it is his call to the night that guides my step.  And it is his face that finishes the sonata I have scribbled upon these walls.

  I sigh at the splatter; a red canvas to enjoy.  My city and its tears - they cry for me, cry out for my art - and send a spectrum of color over the stone.  Oil and water and blood and ice.
  Now she is beautiful.  Now she is mine.