1Author: Villanelle
E-mail address for feedback: nights
Warnings: Curse words, homosexual references.
"It's far the worst pain
not to know why,
without love or disdain
my heart has such pain."
-Paul Verlaine, "It Weeps In My Heart"
When my best friend Jane bought me the painting I asked her who the girl on the painting was. Someone, she said. Poet? I thought. No, wife of a poet, Paul Verlaine, Jane said. Supposedly 17 years of age in the painting but she looked more of 47 with that shock of unruly coiled red hair pinned tightly on her head that seemed to resemble more of a watermelon than an oval. And that double-chin! Absolutely disgraceful. Surely the poet was deserving of more. He was, Jane answered, he left her for a man.
I kept Paul's wife on my wall anyway, right atop the kitchen sink where I regularly wash the dishes the minute my lover asks to go off for a drink after dinner with his new friend whose name I don't know, yet I nicknamed Leonardo, after the actor, because you won't know that he's 35 already until he tells you.
I remember when I first met Leonardo. I came home late from work. My fingers ached from all the typing and filing and my carpal-tunnel syndrome that I left unmedicated. I opened the door and there he was, lying on the couch without a stitch on. I screamed, and my lover came running to the kitchen asking if the mysterious man with brilliant brown eyes and dark hair cascading like water on his forehead was watching Friday the 13th again. I was introduced to Leonardo, who was my lover's friend from work, a digital artist also, freelance. Now can you please wash the dishes, he tells me, indicating with the papers in his hand that he and Leonardo wish to be alone. I was hesitant at leaving a naked man alone with my lover, and with a shaky voice I told Leonardo to clothe himself but he answered that why should he when he's got nothing to hide?
I trudged to the kitchen and brushed a stray of black hair from my tightly pinned braid. Methodically I washed the dishes, starting from the wine glasses to the white dishes to the silver spoons to the greasy pan.
I scrubbed to the tempo of their conversation, to the crescendo of their laughter. In front of me Paul's wife is telling me to focus on the dishes. Outside, the stars are shining. I look at its outlines and I could swear I saw Orion's dog shining even brighter than he should. Its not even January. He must be looking for a mate.
*****************
Leonardo and my lover had an argument over their plans of a digital art gallery they were to open together. Apparently Leonardo wanted vibrant, eccentric, witty colors: electric blue, tangy orange, blushing red. What's wrong with blue, orange and red? My lover rebuffed. Why toy with words and colors when you don't need to? But surely we can be more creative than plain, Leonardo answered back. Isn't that supposed to be the building blocks of digital art? This was met with my lover's shake of the head. Leonardo grew more and more impatient and I locked myself in my room in fear. You do not want to be near an angry man who told you before that he's got nothing to hide. I knew I made the right decision the instant I heard the sound of breaking glass. When it was all over, when I heard Leonardo's sedan speed away, I crept downstairs and found my lover, surprisingly, not picking up the glass, but staring into space. He reminded me of the time when we were children and his dog was eaten by drunkards, like the sun had been covered by the moon who has no plans to leave. He picked up the one glass that has not been broken and smashed it to the sink. He looked up and saw Paul's wife looking at him disapprovingly.
"She looks afraid," my lover tells me.
"She's not afraid of anything," I boldly answer.
"Who is she?"
"Paul Verlaine's wife." I repeated everything Jane told me.
My lover says that the woman on the kitchen wall is hardly like Paul's wife. She doesn't look like a 17 year old from an influential family, he said. With that frown? With those hard, rough hands and creases on her forehead? Why would Paul opt for the roughness of a man when his wife bears the hardness of a suntanned hippo, the glare of a lion, the skin of a cow, and all the ugliness of a man you can never find in a woman? Why would Paul fuck a man when he had a man right there, he laughed.
As he spoke, I found myself half-listening as I picked up the glass at a rapid pace. Now he went to the door and with a voice that sounds seemingly far away, said he will be out for a drink, and that I don't wait up.
The door slammed. I bent my head down and looked at the blood in my palm. I have held too long to a piece of glass and I have cut myself. I examined the cut, not too deep but it is enough to scar me.
My lover is out again tonight and it seems that he will wait for the grey clouds to swirl into pure white before he comes back. The outlines of the stars show a man bent down, and a man seemingly bent down behind him. I wonder if he is helping him tie his belt. I look closer and realize that the man was fucking the other man.
*****************
There was a knock on the door, my lover is home. I paused before I answered, and I didn't know what hit me but I suddenly thought of greeting him naked, like what Leonardo did the first time I met him. So with all but the grace of cat I pulled off my apron, unbuttoned my blouse and forced my skirt that is too tight at the waist down to my knees. I stripped myself until there was nothing left, and lay down the couch. It was cold.
My lover finally found the key hidden underneath the potted plants that I so luxuriously loved that he in turn so luxuriously hated. He must have crushed them now as his curses found my ears, and as he pushed open the door, his eyes found me and at that moment I could have sworn that he is looking at me the way he looked at me when we first got married in a June many years ago. I remember how he looked at me then, with all abandon, like a panther licking its teeth as it eyes a hare in a rocky crevice, my wedding gown a crumpled mass of cloth coalescing with the whiteness of hotel bedsheets, contradicting the darkness of my hair free-flowing, legs smooth as rose petals on my wedding bouquet.
Now, his eyes pawed the dryness and rough textures of my skin, the bulging stomach, the mass of unshaved hair matted on my legs. I smiled in my nakedness and looked at him coyly, or at least I tried, like how I used to before. Like how I lay on the bed after the holiest of matrimonies and let him devour me. Devour me. I don't know how coy I can be now that Time spent for making myself beautiful has been spent on washing the dishes, greeting my lover's friends, and wiping the floor clean for him to walk on. And as I was thinking this my lover clucked his tongue, turned his back and climbed upstairs. From the distance I heard the door to our room slam, and the distinct sound of a lock.
I got up and walked past my clothes, on the glass Leonardo broke and littered on our floor, and thought at how he could hurt me physically without even trying. I peeked out the window, to the moon. The prone man seems to be moaning now. I looked up at Paul's wife, whose sympathetic glance silently told me that I've still got dishes to wash and a man to love. But when I looked closely, that glint in her eyes seemed more like she was telling me that its not too late for me to grow a shaft.
THE END