Monday, February 1, 2010

Challenge 1: Paramour

“Lucas”, he laughed, “you are what the sun will always sing.”

A moment ago, el sol sat in the sky wearing his purple wedding dress, the one with the orange vale. He doesn’t know that the aisle he walks goes around and around, or that he’ll be back here in a day. Timeless waiting takes timeless patience and often, in frustration, he burns with anger, or hides and sobs. But still he walks.

El sol is not the only ignorant. Long ago, nobody realised the earth was a sphere.

Now, las estrellas are beginning to arrive. Too late to hem their lover’s fiery dress with silver lace, or to set his bright blue hair glancing with gemstones; still, timelessly, they seek a trysting place.

The street is hushed, expectant. A young woman saunters into the lamplight, she drags a giggling man. He pulls her against him and tilts her neck to bite collarbone and now she is giggling, he arrect, they trace their shadows around a corner.

“Lucas”, he assured, “you know I will be there.”

Waiting like el sol is enduring and empty. But expecting is urgent and full of him. Full of his moonlike features, his gaunt and silvered bone-hollows. Full of his shadowed breath and the way he cuts the universe in half with his eyes. Full of his bold thrill.

The streetlamps know he is coming and flicker their mockery.

“Lucas”, he insisted, “their slurs, their spit, they don’t matter. Always remember to leave them behind.”

The wind knows he is coming and hisses its disapproval – para-hhaha-mour, para-hhaha-mour.

In this way I am the luckiest man in the universe, luckier than a sunbeam: he will keep his tryst. He is coming.

There are moths under this lamp and they know he is coming before he is here. They scatter sideways. I scatter at the sideways scowls of moths who have never before seen two men in a lover’s embrace.

With full, insistent lips he kisses collarbone.
“Lucas,” he craves, “it’s no different, it’s no more shocking. Long ago nobody realised the earth was a sphere.”

wordcount: 348

2 comments:

  1. Hola, mi gallimaufry,

    This is beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just brilliant! This is so atmospheric and dreamy. I LOVE it!

    (BTW, your last quote, "Lucas," he craves, is right with the comma inside the quotation marks, you have a couple on the outside higher up :)

    ReplyDelete