We’re in a beautiful place, you and I. There are weeds rising resplendent out of every crack in the concrete and there is the slow calm quiet of the peerlessly blue sky. The hush is interrupted, but only by the gentle creaking of a bike as a woman pushes it up the hill. The bicycle’s tires roll over a sparse scatter of brilliantly purple petals; the Tibouchine flowers are senescing. Somewhere nearby jasmine vines creep over a pitted fence. You can smell their perfume mixing with the scent of her exertion; it’s a heady collision.

But don’t get distracted, Gabriel. Sun and verdure and the sweet breeze that haunts the trailing edge of summer; they’re nice, but they’re not what we’re after. Keep your eyes open. We’re here to see.

Watch with me. Listen to the woman’s struggle, see the sweat pinning her violet curls to the back of her neck. Witness the faint path that the woman and her bike have carved into the carpet of petals. It’s one we’ll follow, of course; we will set our feet where the blossoms already lie crushed dark and bleeding.

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She's a queer person for me to tail, isn't she? I know. This woman, with her sweet bland face screwed up, naked from her defeat by the slow rise of a hill. This woman. We both know that she doesn’t merit a second glance. Perhaps that’s why I don’t recognize her. Or perhaps she’s just a lie.

I don't want to talk about this. I shouldn’t. But I’m here and I’m here and I’m here. I try to leave her; it does nothing. I am always finding myself on this hill, with this meek nothing of a woman and these petals and this bike. So I will tell you how those curls frizz up where they aren’t plastered to her neck. I will recite the perfection of her nail polish, how the delicate bones of her wrists press out against her skin. I can’t escape this ridiculous triviality, so I might as well dissect it.