This is my entry for the
750 Word Project 2022
. I hope you enjoy it!
*
She's standing on the causeway between two waters, and she's beautiful and tall and wears a dress the same color as the carnation that flutters in her hair.
A slow fire burns slowly insider her. I can tell by the light in her eyes and the way she holds her cigarette limply at the side of her hip.
"I want to kiss you now," she whispers so lowly that the words are almost lost in the wind.
I met her for the first time yesterday at a café in a sunny plaza beneath blushing orange trees. She sat across the plaza from me and drank an espresso. She smiled at me when she caught my eyes.
I'm meeting her on this causeway now because she asked me to meet her here. We are alone on the causeway.
She faces east, towards the Mediterranean, towards the howling Levante wind that comes from the Sahara. Her eyes are unblinking, fixed to mine. Their color is a deep blue of the sort I've seen once in a garden in Marrakech. Her dress blows westward towards the Atlantic and hugs her body tightly. Her hair shimmers in the red sunglow like how the Sahara shimmers. I imagine that some of the Sahara sand is in her hair, and perhaps it is the sand that shimmers.
Slow ships crawl across the strait. Beyond them, the distant Atlas Mountains lay like lazy giants beneath purple clouds, and Tangier glimmers like stars. She smokes her cigarette, and she curls her lips into a wry shape and adds,
"Then I want to put my hand down your skirt."
If I protested, it would come out of me only meekly. But I don't protest, as I want her to do what she says she'll do. So, I say nothing.
She sees my desire and gives me a smug smile, drags again on her cigarette, and blows smoke that dissipates quickly.
"Now sit on that rock," she demands.