This is a house with so many rooms. More, it seems, that can be measured from the gardens, from the downstairs. There are hidden doors and tricks of the heart. This room is not like the others. I don't believe this is where you sleep, though you assure me it is. I want to smell your skin but I cannot. It is nowhere in this room. This is another space waiting for something to happen. I am sitting on the bed and you are standing by the window. The curtains are open. I want to take in the back of your neck through all five senses.
So many rooms. So many.
Do you know the myth of Persephone?
No.
The god of the underworld tempted her with pomegranates. I would tempt you with pomegranates. Would you allow this?
What is for me to allow? You want what you want. You'll have what you want.
He stole her from the aboveworld. He took her down.
And held her there with pomegranates?
Yes.
This is the disrobing ritual: my shoes slipped off, lined up beside one another. Your shoes. Garters unfastened. Stockings removed. The linen jacket draped over a hanger. The waistcoat. The pants. My dress, the beautiful moonflower dress, collapsed into piles of meaningless satin, a careless collection of champagne sequins. It is nothing without my body to hold it. Without me it is less than the sum of its parts. It is a shell. I drape it over the back of a chair. I'm not ready to be naked but your desire whispers for skin. I take off all my jewelry. The disrobing ritual. We have never done this before.
There is a bowl of them. On the nightstand there beside the window. The bowl is alabaster, the fruits balanced inside with their gleaming red skins, like something painted. Waxed. In your hand, the fingers curled around the rim. Like a woman in blush, a woman in lipstick. I am unwound across the bed. I have unraveled myself, poured my flesh across the sheets, washed up beside the pillow. I am pressing my knees together. I am covering my nipples. I am looking at you through my hair. You are here. There is a fruit in your hand. You are naked with your well-groomed hair and your small neat fingers. You are beside me. The bed shifts and reality trembles in the tight space of a candle flame.
You planned this.
Yes.
Gentle, insistent. This is the application of your hand to my shoulder. The heel of your hand. The sinews know how you want them to fall but it is my mind that is hesitant. Perhaps my heart. To be so raw on this bed, open and on my back with the front of me laid open to your scrutiny and the test of your fingers, the smooth skin of this fruit. Its insistence. The pomegranate is heavy in the bowl of my stomach. Pale skin, moving with breath, rocking the round red fruit. Cradling it. The breath. The pulse at my navel. The weight of it, something for me to struggle against. I keep my hands on the bed. My toes toward the ceiling. I want to close my eyes but the lids won't fall. I am breathing through my nose. The eyelashes quiver.
You take the fruit. At the space where its skin is warmed by my skin you dig your thumbs into it, the cords in your forearms at attention.
