Bruises

Edging towards bed, I clatter my wrist against the table edge. The top of my wrist throbs. I ignore it, but a minute or so later it is already ridging, blackening. I ache tenderly and think of the bruises that have dotted my hips, my thighs over the past few weeks. If you join the dots, you can follow the trail of our flame-thickening desire, the ebb and flow of our intellectual conversation, and the burgeoning of my real love for him. He has thrown my relationship with the Cypriot into the ring, trampled us both under foot, especially the Cypriot, although he cannot know it, currently swaddled in the sun of good food, raucous debate, grating bouzouki.