I always like your poetry, JG. Here I really like the imagery of a "dull, nickel horizon" and "dappled fingerprints." I also enjoy all the throat/tongue imagery--you use it well and not in the usual way. The only thing I might change is the use of "ne'er," since it doesn't really fit stylistically with the rest of your diction.

Thanks for your compliment on the story. ;-) Honestly, I agree with you both on the duchess' diamonds part. It's not really my image, but I gave Jem the fireflies line. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, are any of these variants better?

"as though an elderly heiress' diamonds had been scattered all over"

"as though a chest-full of diamonds had been scattered all over"

I am mostly bothered by the "duchess" part, though I recognize that "diamonds" are cliche.

By the way, that factory is real and is indeed that beautiful. I would take Mika or anyone else there in a heartbeat, though it's about a 40-minute drive.

My own description of it in my journal went something like this:

Cyborgia is when...

When the night-road is the same color as the sky, and the Newark airport brings forth its crop of a field ripe with lights, heavy golden bulbs spreading their pollen in the ionic breeze.

When the pollution-spewing factories rise up in sharp spiraling magnificence like star-spackled castles wreathed in their purple plumes of smoke.

When the slender lines of bridges and wires cut up air and road like lace garottes.

Driving home at 2 am in a post-thunderstorm haze, that is Cyborgia.

I like this description better, but that's my description and not the story's.

"why, instead of semen, couldn't men ejaculate strawberry jam or something?"
--jareth's tights
"I have had contact with a vagina."
--strangeDivine