Today is the ninth day.
She is sitting in front of me again with all of her wonder. Her hair softly slithers beside her neck and curls playfully on her collar bone, a spout of waterfall caressing the smooth rocks as it falls downward, downward, and makes a splash on her chest. Her face is as ruddy as always, her skin peeking through the gaps on her clothes.
Now and then her eyes dance around to watch the morning break. In her head there must be a story; a certain glimmer of imagination creates projections in her eyes: a cat that prowls as it brushes onto her skin, desperate for attention, a myriad of butterflies in orchestraic flight, a boy wearing a blue striped shirt, watching, every morning, for nine days.
I’m forced to look away as she turns her head slightly towards me.
As she turns away again to gaze at the misty morning, she smiles. It’s the most beautiful, most enticing sight in the world—perfectly drawn as Mona Lisa’s smile, serene as the Starry Night On The Rhone, so perplexingly well-crafted, yet to me it’s more devious than a devil’s inward chuckle.
She must have recalled a memory: perhaps a hot summer day in her vacation house by the open shore. On the scorched sands she sits with her friends, on towels and under explosively decorated beach umbrellas, tall glasses of lemonade delicately situated on the small slopes of sand, in danger of toppling over. Her friends are wearing tiny, brightly colored bikinis while she is wearing a thin, white sundress, showing a little and hiding yet less in her veiled obscenity. One of her friends gets up and runs into the water, and invites the others over. They splash and swim and splatter, wet and glistening in the sun, but she, in her attempt to hide her splendor, plays the lead role in my fantasies with her body’s conjured mystery.
I’m forced to look away as she turns her head slightly towards me.
She opens her bag and pulls out a heavily decorated notebook, as she always does a few minutes before the strike of seven. I reckon she’s writing about the cat. I continue watching her as the hands of my watch tick and tock. In my mind I can see about a dozen men stampeding towards the shore to watch her play with her friends, gazing intently, all but rubbing themselves in front of her trying to catch a glimpse of what lies underneath the soaked sundress, gazing at her like she’s on display, like pornography… shameless.
I continue watching her; her eyes always know where to look. Always dazed at the misty morning. Always deep into her seemingly alien notebook. Always away from me. This morning, though, it’s different—she makes the mistake of passing my eyes with her gaze. I’m caught off guard—she looks intently at me from underneath her lashes, inviting something inside of me, something powerful, something eager to burst out and jump around, something I don’t understand…but I’m strangely familiar with.
I smile awkwardly as she holds my very core, magnetizing me, solidifying me, until I feel that a slight breeze would crumble me and blow me with the wind. I can’t look away. She smiles back—that Mona Lisa smile unparalleled by any mortal being.
On the ninth morning she smiles back.
But that’s not how it really happened.
She opens her bag and pulls out a heavily decorated notebook, as she always does a few minutes before the strike of seven. I reckon she’s writing about the cat. Slowly I melt into a haze of illusion, and I’m caught off guard—something inside of me stirs, something powerful, something eager to burst out and jump around, something shameful and oh so familiar. I stare at her with wooly eyes, mouth slightly open, while the hands of my watch tick and tock, a tugging heat right below my navel. The bell rings seven thirty.
I’m forced to look away as she tilts her head slightly towards me.
No comments:
Post a Comment