sibiu in winter is nothing like you've seen

[cryptic so you don't have to be!]
---

when i was a young man
i loved a maiden fair
with eyes blue as the sky
and lilacs in her hair

---

Shining shoes in the evening was never a good idea.
We were expected to rise late, long past noon, and ride into our sweatshops on the backs of intolerable peccaries, draped all in roses long since rotted. As the sun casts its dying red light like the sinewy tendons of some great beast, we drag ourselves along the cement until our nails break off and our bellies are bloodied, all for the sake of some two-bit aristocrat whose only desire is to return home at night in the hopes that their wives might be waiting. It is only the catamites for these pederasts.
Once our tongues cracked dry, we slid that burning iron down our throats, taking our time so that we might delight in our trial. That was all it was about anymore; the trials. There was no longer a sense of dignity, of refinement, in our art. Where once we had brought out the brilliance in the most decrepit of footwear, now we were simply toiling.
All for nothing but the chance to crawl back home
back home
back to the hearth.
Sunday's crimes are the dreams of August.

---

The only thing on my mind is that night beneath the stars, when the constellations panned before us, and we laughed.

and we laughed

Has it been so long?