Her shirt is pink like strawberry flavored bubblegum and falls
short of covering her naked rump. Lying in bed with her back
to him, she stares at the hairline crack in the wall and wonders
why the much older man won’t stay
a little longer. Why he always insists on getting up right after
to dress himself, starting with the faded briefs and those off-
white socks. She wishes he were a cocker spaniel that she might
cuddle with all afternoon, have him lick her fingers with his wet,
eager tongue. His sigh makes her shiver, or is it the breeze
coming in from the opened window? Next to her, on the edge
of the bed, where the man now sits fully clothed, is the book
he has been reading, splayed out like an afterthought:
Plato’s Symposium. The crease of the spine between the pages
reminds him of the two round cheeks of her buttocks, and he
begins to contemplate those Ideal Spheres, the way the light
lovingly kisses their Divine Form, before willing himself to think
beyond the immediacy of their physical beauty, riding her
curves that seem to stretch across the threadbare sheets like the
hills outside, or the postcard sky above the green-gold grass.
He looks down at his foot, caught in between the dark shadows in
the room and the finite rectangle of sunlight spilled across
the floor. He waits for the exact moment when he hears her breath
grow heavier, and feels the weight of her body slacken. In her
dreams, he will walk slowly out of the house and into the fields
like a boy again, ready for the first hunt.
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