Figures At The Seaside

“Let’s go to the seaside,” she says. 

Our little spot. Away from the crowds, the vacationers, those on holiday and the lifeguards at work. Let’s go to the seaside means she can go without clothes, inhibitions. Display the beauty of Aphrodite; without the yapping of the hounds from Hades.

For me

It means I must go, for there is no denying her, and suffer in feigned indifference. Her radiance is why I hide my eyes. Behind dark, shades. I hide my eyes and my emotions.

“You never get excited for me,” she says, her lower lip sticking out.

I raise my eyebrow, though not what she wants raised. Nor, what has raised before.

“I beg your pardon.”

And even more I beseech. If you knew the thoughts that raise at the sight of you,
what emotions bubble up from within from the mere mention of your name.

“A woman has expectations. Oh, I know we are just friends but really a little,” she wiggles her delicate fingers, “twinge would do a girl’s ego a world of good.”

Oh! Such stabs of the dagger straight to the heart, wielded so effortlessly in such a cursory manner. To be just friends. Ouch! Let me staunch my wound before I so much as twinge dear friend.

“A twinge,” I say with as much disdain as a friend can give, “is precisely why we go here to the seaside. It is not just your nakedness that remains out of sight. It is my own.”

If only there were other spots upon where our nakedness might be together. Twinges there would be. No, full blown rumbles would roil across the land, the earth would move, seas would roll. Oh but what a twinge would do for your ego, my full sprouted admiration would bathe you in adoration. 

“Let’s go. The sun’s going behind the clouds. You can see the sky changing color,” she says, already gathering her things. Eager to dress and go.

And thus ends our day at the seaside. Two figures, twisted in the sun, naked before each other, blinded eyes that see nothing beneath skin. Mouths that speak one to the other yet never get to the heart of the matter. No hearts can be shown. What I would give to clothe you in pretty words of truth. Yet I fear the exposure. 

“This was fun. I’m so glad we have our own little seaside spot,” she says.

“Our own little spot to shed our inhibitions and be free,” I agree. I don’t even choke on the irony.

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This is a prompt from dVerse: For today’s prompt, let’s take a trip to the beach. Choose one of the paintings that follow. [see the painting at the top of the post] Tell us a story (in poem form) about your day at the beach, through the details of the painting.

I chose the painting at the top of the post Figures at the Seaside. I chose to do something different in that I did a prose poem for this prompt. It came to me as I looked at it and it just seemed to say ‘Day at the nude beach’, ‘Twisted’, ‘Figures together but not connecting’. I hoped to create that within the prose poem. To be honest, I’m not sure if this worked for the prompt but it’s what came out. Hope you enjoy!

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