Eclipse

Wait a moment, you beautiful stranger. Stay there under the partial light; let your silhouette carefully line the papered walls. Don’t move, lighten your breathing; I cannot stand seeing you expand a fraction, your waist thickening, breasts ballooning and ebbing back—an unwelcome sight. I will move closer. Just a little bit closer. I will refuse the poison of your fragrance, stare, just stare at you as you manifest the traces of evolution. But halt! You are static. There are no fluids running under your skin and within the veins. I blink lest you remain unchanged. A piece of stone. A dagger against my flesh.

So I walk over the lamp switch. I flick it off just in time for the moonlight to invade the entirety of this hall. Suddenly all is in steady hues of blue. And you, you are no longer white but midnight in your own solidity. Monochromatic. Still, still, so very still. You wrap the silence around you as if it were your very own skin.

There the change long awaited falls. I hold you in my glance to see not the gradual transformation but the one that occurs in a single second of apprehension. You are neither a figure nor a texture now, neither contour nor content. You are black like the eclipse that turns the whiteness away from your brilliance. You are the substance that makes up the mantle you stand on, finally.