Outside, in the heat, Liessa has fallen asleep.
Swaying back and forth in the hammock she seems weightless, dreaming, her copper curls plastered to her forehead in sweaty ringlets. It makes her look like an old painting, some long forgotten saint, peacefully at rest with hair painted unrealisitically close
(more) to the head and a thin golden line for a halo. Her face is rounder than those of old saints, with full, pouty lips reserved only for cherubs and angels.
In her hands, limp on her thighs, is a book. The pen has disappeared somewhere beneath the folds of her thin cotton skirt, but there on the page words are visible, scrawled in distinctly erotic shades of bloody red:
Quick,
Kiss me quick,
Kiss me quick with those lips
Those lips,
With that chocolate,
Quick,
Kiss me,
Kiss me quick.
That's what those lips look like. They're pouting, waiting to be kissed; they curl only slightly and, flushed like roses, wait to be pressed to another's, without any of the bitterness or pain present all through the world.
As I tug the book from her grasp, I see the tiny diamond ring, and my heart hurts.(less)
