Chelsea Allen

Bougainvillea

Luca comes and stretches my arm more across my bare breasts while I sit on the edge of the stool, then returns to his canvas. You’re the loving cramp crawling up my limbs. You’re the embroidered quiet—between the white waves smashing the midnight rocks. When Luca speaks, I speak back your language. My tongue wears it well, refuses to slip out of it. My eyes slip, perverse, all across him, across the salt and the sun on the olive. Unlike you, he ages, I see his rage burning out—within the hour he’s turned small, pale, grey. You still are young. As in the vineyard rows where we tasted berries red and blue, wasted silence in words, lay for hours in strangers’ orchards. Does Luca know I kiss the topmost step to this room before entering, and waiting? Does he see how completely his fingers see this wilting? Draw it back and back? Like the tourist to the shore. Where desire spills and freckles all over. The constellations on your shoulder when you kissed the crook of my neck but looked at Paestum dotted near the horizon and muttered, You can see the ruins from here. Luca has put down his brushes with much clamour. I don’t put the robe back on. I head for my jeans. He’ll ask me to come again tomorrow. I’ll take that as flirtation. Outside, in the garden, I’ll bid Ciao to his wife, who’ll smile the warmest smile, and say Ciao.