Next To Me Or Nothing

1999, KYOTO: Club Jazz in Rokudenashi

Soft wood heels tap the floorboards, Coltrane fills the room. Her opalescent lips smudged at the edges, like rippled lines of sand in messy spring winds. He sees her through worn spines of records and shrines of star jasmine, in ripped powder blue silk. She’s gone with the song, like a sweet crescendo, but phantom pheromones hang in the air. The ghost of her stays. He remains wrapped in her net, trapped in gossamer threads, laced with cursed soft feelings, a head rush. A snow white musk descends, like the flurry of pulp in his cold sake. He’s possessed by a wraith who lives in the notes, a silhouette in the light of paper walls, her name spelled in initials carved in sandalwood bars. She’s in the air and the keys and the flower-filled breeze that blows in the window and whispers, “next to me or nothing.”