i ran into her in the toilets at Central. our herstories writing themselves on the mirrors as the night trains rumbled into a Blakean moment, in reverse, no more like a Facebookean one like when i had written ‘groupies’ instead of ‘aliens’ or failed to write ‘grunge feminism’ on my note about the state of the art after some fuck. Sadly as soon as we met we kissed goodbye – no joy (even though her name was Joy) but 15 hours later there she was again in the QVB toilets (the renovated ones upstairs minus the French attendant) cleaning her teeth in the mirror that only showed the top of her head like something out of Fargo and me staring in disbelief for when she raised it she had two black eyes oh Joy what has happened to you i cried ƒ she pretended not to know me there was this absence of quotation no blessings or even sadness just a fact of two black eyes, tiny like those of the children’s book character Dumbo no i mean Madame Mus or was it Celeste, yes. no again a mistake. inside the pupil i definitely saw K’s* ‘tiny little man’ staring back then away but whatever – those dotted eyes shed a tsunami of fat tears causing a b/w nuclear disaster in my kitchen i discovered on return from that last sighting of her.

Lord she had surreptiously filmed our meeting; when i checked facebook for any advice on dealing with the nuclear thingo there was i with two red eyes in front of the QVB toilet mirror sporting some foreign words – eht laedi tsinimef – in blue permanent marker, kissing Flying (picked up for $7.75, Snow’s Bookshop 1985).

Luckily i remembered – on a visit to Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) i’d stolen a mop from her kitchen! Jeanne Dielman Jeanne Dielman: that green mop saved the day.

Oh! this phallacy of lost luggage disappearing fast as a wrinkle.

*Khrzizanovsky