Ulysses

a short prose piece

You come to stand beside me as I converse with others in a group. I can feel you before I hear you - the brush of your jacket against my hip, your breath, the electricity of your presence.

 

It is like falling off a cliff repeatedly with no waves or rocks to end your descent.

 

You say my name in that amused wry tone of yours, forcing me to turn my attention towards you.

 

You always do that, always find a way to make me pay attention to you, almost as if it matters when I do not notice you.

 

Soon the others disperse and it is just us. You look at me in that manner of yours, the look that makes my nerve endings shiver with desire. Already, you are standing closer than you should and I can almost feel you in my bones.

 

You must see how much I want you and need you. You must feel my desire for you reverberating off my body in thick sulphourous waves.

 

But you are oblivious, painfully so, standing there, making conversation, teasing and smiling.

 

I look at your smile and all I really want is to kiss you, press my lips against yours, dip my tongue into your mouth. As you gesture with your hands and your shirt fabric strains against your chest, I see a flash of skin beneath shirt and all I want is to press my mouth, right there, on your chest and taste the inexplicability of you.

 

As I observe the characteristic way your pants hang off your palm flat hips, I see myself standing in front of you, fingers on your belt, unbuckling it, slipping it out, letting your pants fall, letting you out.

 

I want to feel you inside of me, against me, around me.

 

I want you more than air and life itself. It is only in the lack of you that I make do with all that does not matter.

 

I watch you and I know you cannot possibly know this, will never even begin to imagine the depth of despair my desire for you has wrought, how far I have gone from the person I was and the person I wanted to be.

 

I look at you and the words I wish to say to you are hovering right beneath the surface of my skin, words that will never be said -

 

In seeking a newer world,

I found you

Therein lies my ruin...

Author's Note

it's semi-inspired by tennyson's famous poem Ulysses

Reviews

[Pax Analog]

A powerful parable of desire. Tho' I'm more familiar w/the Ulysses of Homer and Joyce than Tennyson, I don't think it matters.

Your piece speaks w/a quiet intensity of the poignant pull of the Other, the impossible gesture, the phantasmal nature of eros/amour.

Romantic-erotic steam arises from your words as fragrance from a hothouse flower.

Those final lines, "In seeking a newer world,/I found you/Therein lies my glorious Grecian ruins…" are priceless.

[Legion]

I like it. Wouldn't mind a bit more of why this person feels the way it does about the other, but not a bad write. Kudos.