smilodon

In Thoughts of You

There, where the winter's afternoon fades into night beyond the armour of the curtains, she sits. Steel grey Paris rooftops recede into an iron sky that holds the cold promise of snow. The room is empty now; a single chair remains. She looks to where the land rises towards Le Sacre Coeur, deserted now by the pavement artists. They were happy in this room.

It is time for her to move on but not yet, not yet. There is still or ghost or two to engage in bittersweet reminiscence. The pale walls still echo with lost laughter. Can you, clad in cold clay, remember how you used to laugh? And, oh, the exquisite ecstasy of fumbling on warm nights, the curtains undrawn to admit the moon as witness to your love. Can you yet remember that? She can and does with sharp yearning.

Can you, where the poppies grow too red, recall her still? She remembers the last time, making love to the muttering of the guns. She wills away her tears and tries a smile. She breathes your name aloud to fill the silence. "Henri, Henri," The ghosts are kind this time and wrap her in gossamer-soft memories of the good times. Of light and love and living before war came. She sees you in that chair, recalls the way your hair fell into your eyes when you gazed down at her, sitting at your feet.

She sees you again by the early glow of street lamps, hurrying home to her with the wine bottle clutched in freezing hands, brushing the snow from your shoulders as you mounted the stairs on tip-toe to avoid the old concierge. She remembers you in your nakedness with love illuminating your face. She hopes she always looked at you that way.

She has memorised every plane and hollow of your body and explores them now, seeing your youth and beauty in her mind's eye. She can almost catch the scent of you; warm and musky after sleep and love. This is the last time she will sit here. Tomorrow holds a promise of its own; a new beginning, a different room in another place where no ghosts lie in wait to pierce her heart.

The guns are silent now. Sometimes I think she hates me, I, who came back from the red maw of the war. But I am her lover now while you sleep on beside the slow tide of the Somme.

It is time for her to move on but not yet, not yet. There is still some space, this dying afternoon, to spend a while in thoughts of you.

copyright 2003 by smilodon

http://www.asstr.org/~smilodon/