It warmed me and filled me with longing
for what I knew not.
It pierced. It took my
breath away.
Had
I forgotten?
The
women did not appear to have.
Esme(e)
reached out her arm and her fingertips brushed
the leaf of the book.
It
was blank, the leaf, all the book was blank
or so it was to me but
the women did not treat it so.
Carrie
held it upon her lap and gently turned its pages while
the others, clustered and striving not to look it Cleo
leaning back on her elbows with her ankles crossed, Rose
perched on a small flat rock, Elaine amidst
her tumbled full skirts arranged so nicely in abandon
perfectly to set her form and face there
centered on the rug they
had tossed across the earth on which to sit
and so much more, yes I knew that, I had seen it at
once, so much more.
Now
they wanted a tale and
only 1 such as Carrie could tell from their
book of tales.
They held this volume to them; it rode within
its own slot in the leather case.
Esme(e)
wanted a tale. She sat on a stack of fat bound
books
with leaves of grass nodding toward her knees
and others tapping her thighs.
Esme(e)
wanted a tale. She had asked for it.
Carrie
blushed. Recovering herself instantly,
for wasn't it a common thing, and wasn't it a thing
that happened frequently among them?
someone wanted a tale told for
pleasure, for soothing, for transporting and transforming, for peace,
for pricking, for sharing, for companionship,
Carrie would be the 1st to agree to that and
the last to attempt to place a further purpose to Esme(e)'s gesture
or to try to label and position it in any category
known.