SmokeLong Quarterly

I was reading Flaubert when the angel spoke to me. He was small like a worry stone. His head was a wee flashlight. I put the book aside. The angel spoke in a dialect I could not understand. After listening for a few minutes I could only shrug in my ignorance. He didn’t stop talking, his little light bobbing like a train’s. Finally I went back to Flaubert. Then the angel settled down and went to sleep in the ashtray. When I went to bed that night he was still there. I said a small prayer for his safety and went to sleep readily enough. My dreams, though, were filled with mad concupiscence and violent light storms. When I woke the angel was gone and my head felt chock-full of cotton candy. I only mention this because when you called I could not make speech, my voice suddenly angelic. To you it only sounded like silence. To you it was only silence.