Velvet Verbosity

She read the love letter she had written to him just hours before. She felt nothing. Less than nothing. She read the words again, intently willing herself to feel something. Regret, preferably hatred, anything to reassure her that she was still capable of emotion. Nothing. My dearest love,

The letter began earnestly. It had been her hand (had it not?) that had written those words. She peered at her handwriting, coolly examining the words forming sentences and stacked into paragraphs down the page, and wondered at them. Wondered how she could be so indifferent to her own professions of love. Was she a liar after all?

She did believe these things, these words written in her own delicate, careful hand. She must believe them or she could not, would not have written them. Her heart remained a dead stone inside her ribs. A dead, flat, smooth stone. In her mind’s eye, she poked at it like a curious child, turning it over with a stick and examining the underside for any signs of strange and alien life. Perhaps she would even find something ugly, something grotesque and hideously pale, squirming against the intrusion. She hoped, but her hope was nothing more than a hushed, feeble spark.

I long for your return, to feel your strong arms around me, to rest there for such a long time.

She thought of him, of this picture of the two of them embracing. He was an extraordinarily beautiful man, fine-boned with honey coloured skin and hair, perfectly proportioned and strong. An image of his naked form floated in front of her. What grace and power. She tried to see his face too, to remember clearly his eyes shot through with sparkling light and mischief, but she could not. Above his strong shoulders was nothing but a dark fog that stubbornly and lazily refused to part.

So it was like that then, she thought.

to be continued…and edited…