4 words, spoken with a careful voice that sounded like smoke. Delicate, like a butterfly, or a bird.
"Do you love me?" she had asked.
Disheveled hair, puffy eyes, and a trembling lip.
"Do you love me?"
Beady little eyes that watched his every move.
Chirp
Creak of the door as she enters his shop.
Light, pianists fingers run over dust, drum over his secrets. A magician's wife singing the song of the caged bird.
(Music for whose ears?)
A disappearing act unfolding, performed better than her husband's.
Her fingers roll over the roughness of a rope.
(But no. The prestige is not part of this trick. She's not coming back.)
"Do you love me?" she had asked.
Hesitation. His eyelids flutter, like hummingbirds' wings.
"No. Not today." A cat that just ate the canary.
(Coughing up feathers)
Slips her head into the loop.
A tight-lipped grin that cracks itself in half.
Kick the chair from under her.
Hang amongst the bird cages.
Dainty dancing feet and a pretty throat that sings like a nightingale, but only for a little bit.
Chirp.