This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor...
He wakes, cock hard, heart heavy, head humming full of her, of course. Overwhelming images: sight of slender body, sound of gentle but urgent voice, scent of secret skin.
In the room inside his head, others crowd around her, so much more skilled in their words and ways, and she can't help but be delighted, distracted, flattered, fulfilled by their attentions. Who could blame her? He starts to fade. It will be some time before she looks up and around and realizes he has vanished.
He would take her sweet face in his hands, wrap fingers around her graceful throat, force her to look at him, try in vain to force her to see him. He'd take her, take her, fuck it clean out of her--thoughts of all others, desire for anyone else. Pure hopeless foolishness, he knows, where desire meets despair. He fades.
And she? When she realized he was gone, would she have forgotten how he both cherished and craved her, and how she didn't mind that once? Would she understand he was vaporized by desperation and hopelessness as her carelessness flashed over him like a slow-motion silent-movie bomb blast? Would something like love in her fade along with him? Would she feel heat dissipating, coolness gathering in the room as she turned her face back to the crowd?
Monday, January 18, 2010
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6 comments:
Maybe it is just an echo of personal experience, but reading this rouses that same despair, desperation and hopelessness in me.
FairNine, thank you for reading and commenting. I have such mixed-up feelings! I can't help being pleased that what I wrote had power for you. I can't help feeling sad about where that power took you. Perhaps we can both find words to help us do something with despair, desperation, and hopelessness beyond reliving them.
there's a great amount of beauty in those haunting feelings you describe, but usually only in retrospect. And there's a great amount of beauty in this. good for my blue mood today ;)
XOXO
S
WOW! Absolute perfection.
On rare occasions, something I read has the power to create a hard vacuum. It feels like all the air is sucked out of the world. The despair in this piece is - there's really no other word for it - monstrous. You have framed the POV so well, from the intimate and the personal to the public and the social.
You've captured the very complex process of emotional flux so well. And the poem you chose to quote was so entirely apt.
Interesting. I would imagine that if her touched her heart as well as her body, she won't forget him.
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