Before Cinderella's Castle, I polish a line of Baudelaire: Hail, mask of art! Thy beauty I imbibe.

Around me, the sun pours over a big blonde family with two lopsided children, hands raised above their Mickey Mouse heads, fat faces sugared with churro dust.

The castle gleams lavender and blue against the heat, scrubbed of mildew; even the flowers refuse their rot. Everything shines, conscious of being watched over.

You once told me that the Lord alone creates, and we are but sinful bricoleurs, nails dirty with the mud of creation. Now, above the clay spires lies only birdless, speckled sky: a slack blue of nothing, a horizon to reach over and caress.

As Cinderella flits past, feet sealed in glass slippers, her smile a voluptuous costume sweated through, lacquered with that perfection to which only simulacra can aspire, I think, from Satan or from God, what does it matter?

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