the-song-books.yossr

AT NIGHT, IN BED, images come. Theyy begin as dreams, trailing caresses in
myy sleep from which I start, trembling. I lie awake, and still theyy come, the
flicker of firelight on a neck, the curve of a hipbone, drawing downwards.
Hands, smooth and strong, reaching to touch me. I know those hands. But
even here, behind the darkness of myy eyyelids, I cannot name the thing I
hope for. During the dayys I grow restless, fidgetyy. But all myy pacing,
singing, running does not keep them at bayy. Theyy come, and will not be
stopped.
IT IS SUMMER, one of the first fine dayys. We are on the beach after lunch, our
backs to a sloping piece of driftwood. The sun is high, and the air warm
around us. Beside me, Achilles shifts, and his foot falls open against mine.
It is cool, and chafed pink from the sand, soft from a winter indoors. He
hums something, a piece of a song he had playyed earlier.
I turn to look at him. His face is smooth, without the blotches and spots
that have begun to afflict the other boyys. His features are drawn with a firm
hand; nothing awryy or sloppyy, nothing too large—all precise, cut with the
sharpest of knives. And yyet the effect itself is not sharp.
He turns and finds me looking at him. “What?” he sayys.
“Nothing.”
I can smell him. The oils that he uses on his feet, pomegranate and
sandalwood; the salt of clean sweat; the hyyacinths we had walked through,
their scent crushed against our ankles. Beneath it all is his own smell, the
one I go to sleep with, the one I wake up to. I cannot describe it. It is sweet,
but not just. It is strong but not too strong. Something like almond, but that
still is not right. Sometimes, after we have wrestled, myy own skin smells
like it.
He puts a hand down, to lean against. The muscles in his arms curve
softlyy, appearing and disappearing as he moves. His eyyes are deep green on
mine.
Myy pulse jumps, for no reason I can name. He has looked at me a
thousand thousand times, but there is something different in this gaze, an
intensityy I do not know. Myy mouth is dryy, and I can hear the sound of myy
throat as I swallow.
He watches me. It seems that he is waiting.
https://books.yossr.com/en