The market is booming. Swampy air, lucid thirst, dim lights, and all is bare. It’s so clear now what is leading—the primal manifesto of transactional connection within this thoroughfare.

The round robin continues, and he greets the barkeep. Making his rounds—don’t forget he likes his scotch neat. Morale is sagging, and his incoming wrinkles frown. They don’t even dare to think about the morning. Any clarity will make him drown.

Panning over, she bets on anonymity. Just maneuver the dress and sit poised, peering out behind the Bottega gates. The tint has always been shitty. She can be nobody or a Fortune 500 doll to play with if that’s the story she’s writing. Pen and paper, but he’s already typing and nail-biting.

Stars still come out one by one. If only they could see beyond the fur walls and “so much fun.” She’s walked the same loop a million times tonight, and no man really saw her face. He just swears that he could “…get with any broad in the place.”

No money spent, and there’s no name to her person. Baseline goals achieved, but she’s still stuck in the rat race. To what avail comes of the fight? Her liver whines and lack of intrinsic comfort is her plight. She hates the mirror’s clutch as she assumes the masculine gaze. The stretch marks and love handles are playing the blame game.

They’re shimmying past table after table. It’s the dance of the bees with their poisonous honey. She’s tired, and her nightcap is prospective safety. He lingers with the bottle girls. It’s a long walk home.

No more rhyming as you can see. There never was a reason, and she knows that too. Her heels torture her joints on her lackluster exit, and her blinks lose momentum. Don’t ask her where she’s heading. She follows the trail of momentarily inflated certainty.

His tab is closed out, and he trudges back to his throne. Since when did kings choose holey leather loveseats? The long night’s hunt was fruitless, and his taxi man sighs. Speaking in his native tongue, he berates his poor wife. Alone is the king turned plebeian in the backseat.

They both arise: one to the sounds of overly chipper birds, and the other to foul breath and anxious thoughts of death. The rhyme is back, and they see there’s a reason. He mulls over his unquenched thirst while trying to recollect the return home makes her brain burst.

At least she made it in one piece, in a state of frailty at best with garments untouched in her coveted nest. He predictably sheds a tear into his murky coffee. Any news this morning is suddenly old as the only headliner is the loneliness he can now see.

Forced to play nice, she accepts her face while retouching the makeup she’s too lazy to erase. Today, she’s bound to not even recognize the image nor choose to care, and the rest of the world is limited to acknowledging, “Oh boy, she’s got a pair.”

He seeks his counsel in his bland kingdom of tile. Thank God it’s Sunday, so he worships the toilet: releasing everything but ego, he’s left with bile. The whirl of water, around and around again. We’ve been here before. Manually breathing, he counts to ten.

She puckers her dry, cherry lips, and he brings the trusty Gillette blade to his sallow skin. They’ll try again next weekend.