"Forbidden Fruit"
by Elske
I joined the Navy because of Plato. I was young and foolish and had nothing else to do…I did not seek to be married, have children, become a gentleman. I remembered the tutor, the one I foolishly confessed to when I didn't know it was anything that had a name, anything that was already understood and despised. His eyes followed me with a sort of knowing sadness ever after, and one day, before he left, he brought me books of the ancients. The Greeks had understood. I was possessed with these flights of fancy; I determined that the sort of love I carried in my heart was so pure it could only be expressed in sacrifice, in passing from this world to the next. And so I joined the Navy, all the while thinking of Plato's armies made entirely of lovers and their beloveds. The truth was nothing at all like that, and I was torn, battered, searching and aching for something I didn't know and I didn't understand.
And then I met you. And my heart beat in time with yours. I became possessed by you. I dreamed of you, longed to lay down my life for yours. It was the only way I could think of to ever express it. I worked at your side, I looked up at you with eyes filled with adoration. You never seemed to notice. I stayed at your side, I was content. At night I re-read my Plato before dousing the candlelight and dreaming of you, of the things I thought then I would never have, savouring the dreams as if my life would never be made up of anything more. And I was content.
Do you remember the day you first learned we were being sent to Port Royal? You flung an arm around my shoulders, overjoyed. I was intoxicated by your presence, by your nearness. By your you-ness. You were exuberant, telling of the new world, of the delights that we would find there. The other men spoke of bare-breasted native women, but you merely wondered innocently if they had mangoes in the Caribbean.
I longed to drape you across my lap and feed you bits of forbidden fruit.
I'd never eaten mango, but in my mind, it tasted just like your imagined kisses.