Dearest Cacilié,
I think it might be the stench of this sour restroom that gives me these visions of you tonight...
Pervasive and afraid, I can see you now across the table in the cafe, tucked in upon yourself, sipping your deep brown tea as you babble neatly about your reading and your songs, your leisure and your work, how the stars felt last night and how the moon might feel tonight.
I look into your eyes as you speak, not in the form of eye contact but in a manner more invasive, observing the light bouncing across your inky irises, like sepia, appearing them translucent and infected with a slight green tint which only shimmers in the brightest settings. It must cause some sort of psychological discomfort, because you're flicking your gaze away from mine with a nervous laugh. Tendrils of sun bleached brown curls sputter off your scalp in haphazard waves, as frizzy and fizzy as ocean mist. Your tanned skin has been made taut by the sunfire in which you bathe almost every waking hour, creating blushes of wrinkles at the corner of your eyes, and all across your petite face.
I take it all in, and I see it now, perfect in my mind, to the last detail and to the most precious detail. I shudder out a sigh as I wash my hands, deeply and thoroughly, watching the suds and water trickle down my hands, feeling them map their route down my palms and between my fingers...
I can see you now, making to get into the shower after we trained each inch of each other’s skin to be erotogenic and orgasmic in nature. I place kisses across your tight fighted, sun kissed skin and you run your tongue across mine, dried deep by sea salt, and we press our lips together in a kind of insane agony which only comes with love. The sliding shower door flutters open with a glassy scrape, and you twist the shower knob to the hottest temperature. You loved making your bathwater as close to boiling as possible. You said it dug deep into your pores and made you cleaner than the cold ever could. But I know it was only because the cold penetrated your skin and through what little body fat you had, and your breath would seize and you would dance a dance of pain in a desperate attempt to keep warm. I didn’t mind, even though the heat made my head throb and the bathroom spin. I always waited for you to get in first, to step into the steamy rain and soak your curls flat against your head. You beckon me to join you, saying the water is going to grow cold - the heat never lasted long enough. But I like to wait a while, smothering a laugh at your pouty antics behind a tight lipped smile, feeling the steam settle on my skin, moistening it like a seagull’s feathers above the breakwater’s mist.
You give up, and let the water pour. As you reach your arms up to hold your hair I see your figure in its most pleasant form, its most innocent and exposed. A slender body arches slightly to revel in the bath, and brown hair - darkened by the thick wet - hangs heavy towards the drain. Your eyes are closed as you rub water deeper into your scalp, your face poised towards the beige tinted ceiling. As I stare at you, I come to the conclusion that the liquid running quick down your tanned skin would taste sweet, as though your skin sweated sugar rather than salt. Your breasts cling to your chest firmly, your nipples stand erect even in the heat, browned by your sunbaths (how I long to see your skin washed by the tender sunlight!). I step into the shower and rub my calloused thumb across one, feeling it resist, and then spring back into place.
-Stop that, I’ve already come and it won’t happen again for a while.
-Come on, why not at least try again? Perhaps it’s only a matter of effort?
-I can’t! No matter how you do it, I won’t be able. The pleasure has simply faded from my body.
-You can’t mean I’m a poor lover, can you? That I have not the tools or the experience required to
satisfy you entirely?
-Of course not! I’ve come, haven’t I? Now clean yourself.
I groan and give in, but it doesn’t stop my hands from wandering your skin as you perform your cleansing yoga.
Those times have long withered. You’ve gotten far away from me, and I know you never needed me. Looking at myself now in this bathroom mirror, all I can see are pupils filled with madness and delusion, and a deep longing hidden within the purple bags underneath.
I miss you, dearest Cacilié, ever since my death in rational youth and my graduation from reality. I miss the calm effort I could put in to make my insanity remiss, and to keep your worries at bay. But I wonder where you have found yourself? Will my letters reach the right address? Or will they sit desolate in some untamed brass mailbox at the bottom of an apartment building staircase...
I pray they won’t.
Sincerely,
G. Luxhe
Trenton Bebermeier is a fourth year Music Performance and Japanese student. He is fond of all forms of creative expression, and has been submitting to Graphos since he was a first year.
