Sunday, March 16, 2008

Resolve

At the end of the corridor, you will notice the silhouette of a woman. Her back will be turned to you. Her head and shoulder will be leaning against the door frame. From where you are you will conjecture that she is deep in thought, but she will be waiting for you, listening intently to your hesitant approach, to your barely audible footsteps against the cold marble floor.

All you will be able to distinguish is the saturated, velvet darkness of her form. It will be too dark to distinguish the color of her dress, or the hue of her skin. The woman is the shadow. She will not budge, and it will make you wonder if what you see is a phantom. I cannot tell you what she is, only what you will perceive. If she moves it will frighten you. You will be so intent on preserving her stillness that every step will become threatening, every foot forward, a controlled endeavor. You will not know her name, but suddenly, and without knowing why, you will sense something familiar about this woman. This familiarity will terrify you, but you will not flee because of the perversity of hope: the hope that when she turns around you will realize how beautiful she is.

But you don't know if you will be able to survive the split second of horror: the moment right before she fully turns around and reveals herself to you. You cannot turn back. It would be worse if she saw you leaving.

Now you are right behind her, and still, she has not turned around. She will not reveal herself until you want her to, because she senses your fear as if it were her were own. She is hardly breathing because of your fear, not hers'. You place your hand on her waist, and the warmth of her body floods into you.

She feels a hand slithering and coming to rest on her waist, then sliding to her front. She reaches down at the touch, to the touch, for touch. The hand presses her backwards towards the strength of a human body - your's.

She leans back into your chest, and feels the violence of a man's fear. Or is it the cadence of passion that she feels? She doesn't know. She won't turn around, until she knows you want her to, until she knows for sure that you want her.