I wake up thinking in lines

and scenes: a man

in a long dark overcoat leans against a pillar at the far end of a bar,

his face cloaked in inky dark. Something sinister simmers.

An angry scene, chaos, mayhem, a melee of bodies toppling. Glass

shattering, men struggling to be

something better than they are.

In the doorway, a girl

in a shabby  dress, gray-blue eyes dark as bruises, stunned

at what she could do,

what she had done.