He opens a page, a vein of wood, and writes in royal blue, of the blues, distracted by the fires heaped on sidewalks.

Every tree is an omen, a burning bush, and every line written under their undressing shadows, a journey back to sunlit rooms in which Adrienne's

hair veined the white snows of beds, across the splayed cities of a continent. He should be fleeing such devastation, and the winters that trot at its heels.

Yet he keeps looking back, again and again, thinking he can hold on to autumn's crimson in its passing, forgetting his fates are those of Orpheus's lot or Lot's wife.