The sleep by Vicky Lytaki
Blog http://happinessinaday.blogspot.co.uk
Twitter @vclytaki https://twitter.com/vclytaki
We cuddle. Coupled and consumed by ripples of release, swathed in sweet languor. Night night
darling, big hug and nuzzle. I’ll roll over now to fall asleep.
Your rugged warmth pulls apart, your skin breaks touch, the bed splits in two, your side and mine.
Your sleep and mine. I’m left stranded. Snuggled on your back I’d rather nestle in your arms, but I
peel myself off and slink to my side. If we swapped sides would we face each other or end up in
the same position? I’ll ask you to try tomorrow, if you’re not too weary.
Bodies back to back, my tender limbs yield in the lock of your legs. The remainder of your touch a
consolation for having to face the dark on my own. Tonight I must be brave. I entreat your
brightness to guide me out of the shadows. You sustain me. Your breath is my lullaby, your scent
my soporific, I see your beauty behind my eyelids and let the night seize me in motionless life.
Has the body rebuilt and repaired now? Because I know I can shift again, yet not fully revived. In a
confluence of needs I meet you in the middle of the bed, in the middle of the night, in a tight
embrace. Are you as afraid of the dark as I am?
Hands find their resting places on delicate curves and pitch-honed muscles. This is private land
marked by gentle strokes and firm squeezes, nibbles and plunges. The mind wanders in the
sleeping tangle of bodies. I’m carried away as my fingers trace the valleys and hammocks of your
back.
I set off on my own, I schlep through unknown markets, trudge in fenland, clamber over boulders,
they contuse and claw my soft flesh. I know the sea is not too far. The saline scent tingles at my
nostrils. When I reach the coast I can board the ship to London, back to you. I must reach it before
the night falls. For wraiths lie in wait and I’m trembling. I run, I fall, I toss and turn. I run. ‘Thalatta,
thalatta’.
I wonder why the sea now smells like tea. Sea is only a letter from tea. Muttering mouth grabs at
mine. I hold on for dear life.
Silver sea by Vicky Lytaki,
Blog http://happinessinaday.blogspot.co.uk
Twitter @vclytaki https://twitter.com/vclytaki
Ahead, the white shore pours effulgent into its liquid fold. The wet embrace envelops him in
vicarious delight. There is a light breeze. Flickers on the silver sea bounce the light coming through
the cracks in a slate sky above. The new day, tentative, calls out in luminous filaments that guide
the gaze to the right, where the perfectly level sand raises in undulating dunes wearing blond tufts.
His eyes follow the glow, rest for a moment on the soft mounds, then travel back to the left to fix on
her sensuous silhouette. He is only ever allowed a glimpse of her velvet cheek and slender neck
behind those cascading auburn waves. Enough to send ripples to his groin. She’s leaning on the
back of a bench that used to seat the customers of a disused and otherwise desolate ice-cream
kiosk. Its awning, wind-torn and sun-bleached, flaps in a nod to former frivolous times.
It’s too early to be out on her own, he frets. He should be back in bed too, by his sleeping wife. But
he can’t tear his eyes off her. He traces the outline of her back, he’s studied every inch of it, how it
bends and flexes so seductively. He is tempted to reach out and clench his hand on the delicate
waist, pull her close and bury his head in that luscious hair, feel the brush of her derrière on his hip.
His loins stir.
She must have been out collecting seashells again. The beach is strewn with them. Crinkled, fanshaped,
blanched and hoary hued. Hard on the outside, vulnerable on the inside, dinky things.
Maybe his affinity to them is why she lets him in her world. In turn he lets her in on all his private
failings, in his job, his marriage, his thoughts. She’s as tender to him as she is to all the washed up
empty vessels.
She keeps the shells with the trove of miniature vials and vases for her beauty creams and potions
on the ivory dressing table. Not that she needs any help in that respect, her beauty is exalting. She
likes to caress and look at the diaphanous nests as the morning light softly penetrates and dances
through the glass. If he closes his eyes, he’s in her boudoir, her ardent eyes and skilful fingers
dancing on his fervent flesh.
It’s all an imagining, the woman, her bedroom, her life. It is he who can’t sleep, who leaves his
warm bed, who has bequeathed his desire to be made whole onto the insensate painting. He sits
there at half past four, five in the mornings and fashions the picture on his living room wall into
erotic fantasies. A bubbling stream of intimate thoughts pours forth, as he pleasures himself before
her turned figure.
Afterwards, he will get in the shower, swig a bitter coffee and catch his train to the City. Till
tomorrow, my love.
Blog http://happinessinaday.blogspot.co.uk
Twitter @vclytaki https://twitter.com/vclytaki
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