sitzfleisch
“I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life dream, the air I breathe.”
A white castle. Narrow stone stairwells with metal banisters. Hallways that move from indoors to outdoors seamlessly. My feet are slippered in satin shoes that look like a ballerina's. My fingers are long and slender. I wear one gold band on my middle finger on the right hand. My hair is long and black and brushes my waist. A backless, satin dress to match the shoes with a wide sash at the waist. When I run, no one can hear me.
He asked me to meet him. He presides in a gold chair with both palms decked in heavy jewels. He kneels before me. I am the only one he bows down for, but it is me who surrenders. He offers me everything and I take it. We both know I can pay for favors with one thing. My body.
There is a gold carriage pulled by a white horse waiting for me. The seats are soft. Gold thread and red upholstery. The horse has black eyes and eyelashes longer than my pinky finger. Its legs glisten in the sunlight. The driver is a man wearing long blue robes. He waves at me and I slide in behind him. He flicks the horse's bottom with a leather strap, and we move, a slow trot past the gates where soldiers stand with their faces turned away from the sun.
He offered me a way out, and I took it. Money, gold, beautiful garments, rings and gemstone necklaces, earrings that felt heavier than my shoes. I declined all of it. Lying in a bed of feathered pillows where he liked to play with my nipples. I'm too thin, rakish, and the edges protrude. In a way, he likes it. Little miracles, my mother said beauty would save me. It's the indication of goodness, she'd whispered into my ear. Symmetry and health. Holiness. Wash your feet before you get into bed and rub your skin with a bit of oil. Don't look at yourself too long in a mirror, but do check your teeth, eyes, and ears. People look in the little places for signs of God. Filth is never forgotten.
I liked to trace my fingertips along his abdomen. He was muscular and stripped of the robe. He had a body like a lion. Supple. Soft. Lithe and loving, though mean and hard if necessary. Hard, yes. Cruel, never so! He was never mean to me.
Did he love me? I asked myself this question every night, back in my own bed with the tattered sheets and musty pillowcases. Everything felt like sand, granular. I'd lay on my right side and breathe into the dark. No light seeped into the little room. I like it this way. I enjoy being consumed.
A question of love is never personal. He loved me the way he loved himself. He didn't know me; he couldn't. I held up pretty portraits of who he wanted to see. At least, that's what I thought I was doing. I was so young. Silly. Naive. Trusting. All along, he was watching. I was that deer speckled with the dawn. Aubade.
The hunt has nothing to do with love! It is all for desire! Lust and pursuit.
We didn't speak to each other. Our engagement was virtuously physical. Purer without words. The context would have been distorted had I stepped up to him and introduced myself. So I didn't. I let him call me whatever he wanted. He called me Aubade.
A song sung at dawn.
He said many things when we were reclined beneath the yellow canopy. Long, creamy sentences that washed over me like his strong hands. Cheek, chin, clavicle; I didn't hold onto any of it. If anyone questioned me, I would be completely honest. There is no other way to be without a forthright assertion of what is.
Wisdom comes from memory.
My recollections of those moments are crisp as the napkins we used to wipe each other's palms after sharing the slices of fruit that arrived on little plates. Dark purpled cubes. Bright pink and yellow slices of things that oozed between my teeth. I laughed once, and the juices ran from my chin to my chest. He laughed with me and we sat in our sticky mess and wet the napkins with a bit of warm water before moving them in small circles along our bodies.
Pouring tea into a cup. Folding my dress and placing it on the edge of the bed. Breaking a biscuit in half and offering a piece of the sugary confection to his mouth. He had the most beautiful blue eyes that watched me perform the simple gestures.
My duty was to be a playmate, a plaything, and I was very good at it.
Take his mind off the troubles of being a king! It was the only order. It was my job to make him forget, and quietly I collected memories as one poured water into a bucket. I am in the middle; my role ends here and I will pass that bucket along to someone after me. I will not see where it goes. I will not witness how the water is used.
The point is to collect. Collect and then forget everything.
We never said goodbye. It would have been too obvious. He tied his blue sash around my waist. He kissed the inside of each wrist. His blue eyes weeping the entire time. I refused to cry. I had to be brave. I envisioned my mother. His porous gaze was like the horse that drew the carriage down the unsteady streets toward the forests. A green so rich I became dizzy with desire. I'd never been into such terrain. My excursions remained in the city, along the river's edges, where we poorer folk rinsed our clothes. All I knew was the topography of the Laotian temples.
Clouds bloated and I sensed rain was coming. So did the horse. I was to switch carriages once the foliage concealed us. Someone else was to transport me. The red upholstery was too fancy. It would attract too much attention. Prisoners do not get such luxuries.
I never felt like a hostage or as if I was being held against my will. I did not know what it felt like to demand a life of one's own. All I knew at that time was how to submit to the summon of others. My mother trained me well. She taught me how to stay alive.
Did he love me? This question keeps me up at night. If I've one quest, it is to keep the two hearts I hold beating.
The commander of the red carriage was shot in the right temple. I took the rain and snapped the stirrups hard. The horse reared and took flight into the woods. We are alone, the three of us, in the wild. My first task as commander was to remove the cart from the white steed. Without a proper seat, I sat on the stallion bareback and made a fist with its mane.
Women used to look for flowers because they were signals for food. I have done this before; only I cannot recall the exact moment.
He taught me to close my eyes and breathe deep into the space around the beating organ in my chest. He'd tap my rib cage and press his palm lightly against my heart. He'd cup my belly and press his ear to my navel. As I did with the shells I collected at the seashore as a child.
Waiting to hear from the thing that knocks.
My boots tap lightly against the horse's flanks.
We must keep moving.
To be still is death.
Photo source.
