Her Moving Portrait (short story)

The mistake she made last night was my lucky break and if she did not grasp her error then, she will when she wakes up. God, she's beautiful...

The autumn sun is about to climb in through these dirty windows and when it does, she will leave, I know it. She will not be caught in broad daylight, let alone in this room and above all not with me. Our paths will part forever this morning and she will remember this, her obligation, as soon as she wakes up.

I can’t go back to sleep now and would never waste my time with her like that again. I sink down into the one chair I have, shamelessly observing her. Notebook in hand, I watch her come to and immortalize this scene ahead of me before it and I both are banished to her past.

I scribble these lines down when my flaming gaze awakens her. Like she senses my eyes climbing over her delicate shoulders, As if they stroke her fragile neck. Her hair is a mess and I will be forced to relive this when I find her blonde straws in my room for weeks from now. But her face is still the image of perfection. Her fingers wake up first and they grip the bedding as if she’s afraid to float away. So fragile and exposed is she in front of me that I’m almost embarrassed to record this.

She deserves better than my bare walls and stained bedsheets. She is worthy of more than this because these sullied windowpanes are mere symptoms of my other dysfunctions. I resign myself to my inevitable fate, but I’ll be damned if I won’t have as much as a souvenir to remember her by, lest I’ll think this was just a dream. She owes me nothing but she’ll grant me that.

As if she’d never been asleep, she does not say good morning but simply asks me what I’m writing, with one eye open and one half of her face still buried in the pillow. When I say that I'm writing her portrait she turns her head towards me. Asking questions with both her open eyes now, rubbing the slumber from them, she wonders what it means to write a portrait, how long it will take and if her nudity somehow is about to be exposed to the world.

I explain that writing her portrait is almost like painting, photographing or sculpturing her. But that a restless soul like hers is fit for no other medium; she would have been nothing more than a blurry picture, a long exposure or a shapeless block of marble since only words are able to capture the way she moves her body and yours truly.

So she grants me this, my final wish, out of a graciousness of sorts and passionate pity of others and lingers impatiently as I myself take down the protocol of my heart’s torture. She understands that she is a source of inspiration and I have almost drained her. My hands move thus whilst my eyes are fixed on her thin lips, her breasts and legs as she stretches herself on my bed in the same deific way she would have done if she'd been alone. I'm overcome with feelings of both thankfulness and sorrow, faced with that naked beauty I shall never more behold. I struggle to keep her living portrait from becoming an obituary of our almost-love now as I prepare to bury us here on paper before my bed even goes cold.

My eyes mount and climb all over that body, pale and frail, writing without looking at the paper, blindly and frenetically as she basks in the intruding morning light, blessing it with her warmth. When my hands write these lines, we're chatting, and when these words are born, she looks out of the dirty windows at the rising sun. She’s lost in thought for a second and I observe the moment she recalls that she has a heart to break today.

When I return to her portrait, she lays kissed on the bed again, as naked as anyone has ever been and without a hint of last night’s intoxication. But my writings do not entertain this feline creature anymore, and I see her body tense as she prepares to carry out her sentence.

She wastes no time getting dressed and I’m sure my heart will never beat as fast for her again, before she’s gone. With a searching look she makes sure nothing is forgotten here and I hope with my entire being that I will not be either. Arms to her sides, she turns towards me with a guilt-free yet regretful look, waiting for a last embrace because the last kiss has already been gifted. Half the man I was last night, I meet her gaze without regret in mine and put the pen down to say my thanks, farewells and adieus.