Landing Practice 08
30th September 2025
Monthly Newsletter
Two-Sided Affection
By Sá Shellard
‘Lovers who are each other’s double,
Time cannot dignify nor love ennoble;
And since the flesh created partly one
Can merge no further, still less be undone.
Let them whom parting closets,
love parades,
take up for talisman the Jack of Spades.
Our eyes henceforth, their colors and their spaces,
Must seem the features of the Jack’s two faces,
Forever turned apart, to bear in mind…’
(Friendship of Fools, Turner Cassity)
Wrapped in matching birthday smiles, we ran engorged across the Seine. Fed-full, inside elastic strides, we made their world our own. And under this Love, the all-mighty force, we fanned our parasols like summer nymphs.
Here, at night, the city swells.
Paris is drunk – time to go looking for something to own. I ask for something sweeter, maybe a piece of heaven-slice.
Caught in a heap of plumes, I’m high again. Howl-hung with the dogs of August. Nothing’s amiss in the swan’s nest, except my head.
I don’t contend with time. Time is toy. Such days dream up themselves then catch fire, we wear them on our skirts like combustible artwork.
Friendship is the ultimate overspill and this is where I’m found: homed in dextrous hands, bathed in spume & fizz, skipping along her flaming trail of effervescence.
Forever held in her Museum of Commemorations, clinging still to the fixture of a time well-lived.
With Love & In love,
Sá
August Gatherings
Album: Reflections - Gill Scott-Heron (1981)
Book: Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black - Cookie Mueller (2022), Lost Cat - Mary Gaitskill (2020)
Essay: Salt Statues by Mariana Enríquez
Essay Collection: I Used To Be Charming - Eve Babitz
Magazine: Philosophy Now - August 2025 Playlist: Existential Summer
