| Author | Message | ||
| M
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3833 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention The Flow of Silk Steve Williams The hardwood floor in the Victorian holds the yellow shadow of the window. A fall of silk lies moonlit in the square reflection: an eruption of white chocolate turned cold. He sits against the darkened wall and stares at the fabric of his desire, remembers her façade, a mask of glitter and iridescent plumes had covered all but her eyes, dull and thick. The silk was wrapped around her body in loose folds and eddies, as if the maker worms had come to life around her waist, under each breast. Her hips swiveled in spiral ripples and the cloth passed over skin as sweet milk would curl over stones in a stream, barely submerged. One hand beckoned, the other grasped a dagger with a hilt of finger-bones fire-blackened and twisted into a cradle for steel. The blade was a spinning mirror in his pupils: contract, expand, react too late, the shadows danced. In words spoken with spaces between them, she asked would you bleed? She clasped his hand, unwound silk from her body, entwined his bicep, elbow, her silk sweat slid across his. The point of her blade was poised above his palm, the mask tilted, her eyes were now white, sharp. Hips swayed slowly, tugged at his body as the knife remained, motionless. He nodded and the blood flowed onto wood. Soon the last inches of silk were draped around his shoulders and for an instant, she stood naked, untouched, then became the light leaving through the window. * * * * * He rises, wakes his sleeping wife. She rustles down to the kitchen, starts a kettle of water, flits around the room, as the water skirls. She returns and bathes the wounded hand, threads a large steel needle with red silk and slowly, carefully, pierces, pulls tight, weaves the gash shut. |
