4 p.m. in the Marais by H.Richer.
The migraine has left painless bliss, like dawn after the dark. He is no longer near, rain rattles in the courtyard. She wants to be beyond reach, beyond complications, beyond questioning. For a while, alone. The bed is warm, like a mother’s embrace in the night. She stretches, leaving sleep behind, clear and light-headed, inside the windows, drifting from a dream of home. Awake life seems kicked in, like a mosquito bite scratched to blood. He is no longer near, rain rattles in the courtyard. Feeling like a scared and crying child, not sweet, not simple, before consciousness.
Alone for a while.
The bed is warm, like his breath when he whispers foreign love, in the hollow of her white neck, like his dark smooth skin radiating and caressing hers. But she’s been balancing between for too long. She wants bedtime stories to tell, and in the telling return in time to a mother’s embrace in the night.
Thank you, you’ve been really busy on my blog. I just looked up sestina :). I studied poetry, but don’t remember much about the different form constraints. For me this is a piece of flash fiction, but a lot of contemporary ‘poetry’ doesn’t follow any form.
The rhythm of this piece reminds of a sestina. Have you written one before? I really enjoyed the rhythms here. Light and dreamy.