Fiction: Curves in the Right Places

"...we are eating fresh garlic shoots.
They are like fish, very shapely, very seductive.”

 

-- Ba Ling Translated by Meifu Wang and Michael Soper

 

What does it mean when you delight in the layered waves of a woman's hair? Is it a seduction --but more importantly, why?

The rolling of the ocean intensified towards midnight. Across the stretch of tank obstacle jacks in rusted steel and concrete

On the rooftop, she shook her blond locks loose. They fell about her shoulders like fine strands of fiberoptic. Straight hair meant peace, the inverse of jealousy. Every planet that has a moon, it's gravity causing tides, winds, like Saturn's rocky rings, forces that rake through a person's DNA in externally visible ways, separating hair into locks, locks into curls. And the surf began to beat brashly against the wave breakers.

When we touch, our skin should tingle -that's love.

We were interrupted by the ration tin clanking on the concrete outside. And a brusque rap against our cube.

Fish and onion shoots in XO sauce, I said as we shared it and the meager portion of boiled rice which I supplemented with wheat flakes from my backpack.

Are curves, therefore wisdom? Like grass growing on the rolling Scottish hills, are they any less clever? Like rock worn smooth by desert sandstorms, are they somehow more inspiring? Like fine whiskers, does the hand of a man suffer to announce itself to his wife's skin? And when like Chinese limestone hills, what is weaker is worn away and the crags of our internal works peek through, is that the face of forever --the purpose of our God?

 

We slept beside one another in embrace, as it was cold in the early hours of the morning, her skin and hair feeling like silk against my body. So much had happened. And as I ran my hands over her Scottish hills, I met with her castellations of steely determination, through the gilded barbs of her thistle hair, I consoled myself of what might come.