Spent Matches and Sulfur

She hooked her legs round his neck and wailed into the trove of his ear. The gypsy woman smelled of orange roughie, creel and roe. The heels of her feet were bricked with calluses, a plagiary of hard skin that caused her to keel to one side like an abandoned ship. He tried to push her from his chest but she heeled upside his kidneys, so he shook his head from side to side hoping she’d declutch and leave him be. When this didn’t work, he boxed her ears and whispered, ‘you gypsies are a miserable bunch, all this wailing and plagiary', and threw her to the ground, an odor like spent matches and sulfur bricking the air.