Пьющий медведь

ALT Caught. The kiss stops, and over her bare shoulder the dark mask turns and holds our eyes, level and unsmiling, while she does not move at all. It is a print's stillness with an intruder's guilt in it, and the intruder is us.

ALT Two masked lovers in an old Japanese print, he holding her up off the pier so she can reach his mouth, her bare back pale against the sunset. The sea goes gold behind them, and their kiss is drawn as gravely as a samurai's farewell.

ALT The kiss pulled close enough to fill the sun. Two masked heads with their pointed ears are cut black against a burning disc, her bare shoulders and back caught in a line of gold, and the whole world reduced to the two of them and the end of the day.

ALT Before the kiss, the cat burglar waits on a temple roof above the sea, her bare back lit by the last sun, looking down at someone she has already chosen. She is calm and patient, a thief who came for something other than gold.