aubade: still life
Aubade: Still Life Carolyne Wright A length of sari voile draped over the curtain rod filtering the North Atlantic’s morning light. Arabesques, paisleys of rainbow splayed over last night’s wine glasses. One glass tipped over on the table, a tongue’s lick of claret trembling in its belled stem. Fingers of sun across the room as I step, still sheathed in dream, onto naked floorboards. In the bed, the man sleeps. One arm has thrown the old quilt off, his body lean, mahogany among tangled blankets where a single uncurtained slat of light presses against him, his sex at rest, legs akimbo, his arms outstretched, embracing my shadow imprint in the sheets. How could the two of us have slept so in that narrow bed? I wash in a pool of hyacinthine light that spills from the bathroom mirror, touching myself as gently as he did last night, when he stepped between me and my door. When he stopped taking No for an answer, and my own acquiescence surprised us both. His hands across my body through what was left of night, almost proved my fears wrong. His flesh entered mine for the first time: colors penetrated, passed through our hands like kaleidoscopic fragments, arabesques of shadow kneeling to each other. Now, taut mask of his face relaxed in a dreamer’s
glassworks 28