3. Una Furtiva Lagrima
Rating : PG
Prompt : Write anything you want, provided you don't use the letter e.
Admit it, you would think of coitus as you thought of maths – body adding to body, that is, with a sum's trim clarity.
Until you found that sums blur at morning's first intimation, and body slops into bathroom for a wash or a post-shag fag. Dullissimus. Body asks again and you say No, will not do, and pat on No body sobs, body damns, and how to think at all in this hoo-ha is a conundrum of its own.
Uni days, you vowing to shag drugs for clarity. Bright boy.
Body's payback had you stop and think. Body still a fact, sadly. But you know how to curb facts to your will and could soon nod at your mirror proudly. This was a body to your liking – quick, angular, strong – a fit shadow for your brilliant mind.
That was six months ago.
Tonight you sit in a dim-lit front row and watch him watch Alagna sing Una Furtiva Lagrima. Music is hardly his strong suit, as you know –that fond 'all right' was for you, to humour you. Ah, but look at him now. Look, until your lungs grow tight. Crying without a sound, both crying and smiling, though Italian is a shut book to him. Why? You try, but tonight you fail at divination. What lost imprint of joy and sorrow is surfacing again in him, at Alagna's soft vibrato, you cannot, shall not know.
A patch of warmth on your thigh. His hand.
Admit it, you would think of attraction as you thought of music – that it took a body lissom and violin-taut for yours to hum its part along (until you said No to Victor). Now you look at your companion – man of brown and gray, aging man, no whip-sharp contour about him. But smiling straight at you, not shying away as your curious lips touch salt.
Stooping into dark warmth, you know that you'll sustain a cramp tomorrow. Unimportant. As long as that song unfolds, you will not shift your mouth.