Escape

Two women,

both surrounded by glamour

and beauty unequal to that which

they possessed themselves. The gold rims of the champagne flutes

were nothing to the sheen of the paler one’s auburn hair,

and no grape could be more green than her eyes.

Likewise, not a single Summer’s day sky

could hold a more heavenly blue

than the brunette’s eyes and not even the greatest

woodworker dead or alive could make

a mahogany table with as rich as lustre

as the colour of her hair.

 

Both dressed immaculately, each uniquely alluring,

catching many eyes from beneath trilbies

and earning several cocktails (politely

declined). They find themselves

drawn together, exchanging pleasantries and then a little more,

deepening into an intense mutual understanding.

 

At the end of the night, the auburn-haired one

took her companion’s hand; they

retreated from the regal hall and

she led her up to a room

through a maze of staircases that

took them from the party

(laughter and chatter dying away

with every corner they turned)

to another world.

 

The room was sultry with red folds of fabric

fringing a space where a grand piano stood,

its keys patient and ageless. The auburn-haired woman

sat upon piano stool without a word.

She begun to let loose her auburn locks

from the glorious updo, and her companion

stepped in and added her hands to the two already

untwisting the delicate tendrils. Slender fingers all working

in unison, until her tresses flowed down her back

unrestrained.

She slipped her feet out of her white stilettos,

perfectly baby-soft skin over a thin frame of bones,

and placed her bare toe upon the piano’s

pedal. Her fingers lingered in the air over the keys

before caressing a melody from them.

 

Watched by blue eyes;

(the point of her nose as her head moves into the chords,

the rustle of her hair, sliding over her skin

and around the contours of her shoulder blades,

the carved smoothness of her cheekbones)

eyelashes finer than an artist’s brush could paint,

now falling and covering the look of rapture as the

music touches her core. A shiver

passes through her, the gentlest sigh

drawn from her lips blushing with emotion.