A Night in a Year: 29. Seeking

She turns from the Guildhall, and moves with a casual, cat-walk step, a promenade around the square. She curves past the now-shut clothing stores in one corner, and is soon under the stained glass windows of Great Saint Mary’s.

Looking up at the church, she thinks of the tower. She’s never been up in it. She wonders if the stairs upwards would be tight, a press of bodies and unyielding stone. She imagines herself, and another, the solid bulk of a male form, in there, alone, and what they might do, tangled on a staircase.

The thought tantalises. But it is only brief, for when reality kicks in, she snorts. It would be fucking cold and probably drafty.

The images on the glass are obscured by a dull light from inside the church. She releases a long breath, and wonders at how easy her thoughts become profane, without pause or consideration. In a church? In anywhere that is considered special, important, holy?

Rarely does she consider her soul (and then only to question whether it exists or not), or the idea that there is more to the world than the material. The experience of the body, the heights of sensation to which it can climb and plummet, those moments of fusion to another person, suggest something greater beyond herself, beyond the limits of the skin.

Suggests does not equal reality.

A chilly wind blows across her back. She shivers, wraps the shawl tighter, and glances in the direction that it comes from. The empty market stalls are still empty, but rather than a mere absence, she feels a void, a nothingness.

For now, she senses there is something, or someone, in the darkness.

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Next: 30. Observed

Image found on flickr, by mrhayata, used under the Creative Commons License.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.