the color of dusk

her skin her skin.  these were repetitions, as words rather than images as he always thought to himself in language her skin.  prone to droning, he returned to the vision.  dark brown, like smoothed soil, or the beginning of the morning.  he liked to smell it through the perfume she didn't need.  when he walked to the gym at 4:45AM the ground was always wet from some lost rain he hadn't been around for, her skin her skin.  sometimes she was naked and sometimes she wasn't.  sometimes she was angry or upset but most often silent.  he sung with recordings of damaged men at night, along with whiskey her skin.  crooning like a lovesick cat; the comparison cooled him, so he became abruptly silent.  that was somehow worse.  that was somehow worse her skin her skin.