Sunday, August 15, 2010

Tell her

(This story appears in Issue #17 of Inner World magazine starting at page 60) 

 I smiled into her eyes, my body stretched on hers, and reached for the scarves that bound her wrists to the bed. "Maybe I should not release you," I whispered into her ears and kissed the strands of hair clinging to the sweat on her face. "Maybe I should keep you bound here until you confess your love for me." 

She laughed giddily "and what if I never fall in love with you?" 

"Oh you will love me" I said as I undid the scarves and released her from under me, "you will love me more than you have ever loved anyone." 

She stood and dressed quietly before turning back and sitting next to me on the edge of the bed. "Is this what you told her too? Does she love you more than she ever loved anyone?" 

I took her hand in mine and looked into her eyes. "Babe, you know that I don't love her. That you are the one for me." 

She turned her face away avoiding looking at my eyes and my naked body. "But when are you going to tell her that?" 

I reached out and with a hand under her chin gently forced her to look back at me. "She will be hurt love, and I am trying to break from her as gently as I can. You know this." 

"Yes, I do know this, and if she feels for you half as much as I do, I know that she will hurt. Hurt for a long long time." She rested her head on my shoulder, "and yet this isn't right. Your making an alt to see me. It isn't what the man I love would do." 

We sat at the edge of the bed, my hands caressing her hair. "I don't know how it is so different from what you are doing. You have another lover too. What about him? You and he have been together for even longer than I with her." 

She sighed and sat up straight. "It is different. We have an open relationship." 

I laughed softly, shaking my head. "And yet he does not know about us. You meet me in secret too." 

"I never loved him. You loved her. That is the difference." She leaned forward to kiss me quickly and got up from the bed. "Look, I know the real person behind this alt and the avatar I met first is one and the same, but somehow it feels dirty for you to be using an alt. It just does." 

* * * * * * * * * * * 

"Sorry I am so late love. The wireless connection is so flaky" she said laughing apologetically, "and you know there is no one I can complain to since I am stealing it from a neighbor." 

She sat down next to him on the couch, leaning over to embrace him, kissing his face. "It is good that you are going through a busy phase at work. I don't feel quite so guilty about being online so little." 

He sits unmoving while she kisses him. "What is the matter love? You are quiet." 

"There is something difficult I have to tell you," he said, turning towards her.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

I first made you

I first made you.
Not from whole cloth,
and not from textures stolen.
Not from billions of polygons
in a souped up graphics card.
Not from faerie dust, and
not from the ephemera of dreams.
I made you from conversations.

I first made you
for conversations.

(They say that short short fiction is really prose poetry. Well, this one just came out that way.)