Interlude Late In the Afternoon

Interlude Late in an Afternoon


For several days in a row, when I was home alone
in the waning hours of the afternoon, basking
in the shadows of the porch, she walked by
sans speaking, clad in a loose, cotton sundress
and barefoot. Her hair was straight, long and dark,
falling to her bare shoulders and back. One afternoon,
out of the blue, she stopped and queried whether
she could use my phone, only for a minute.
After her call, during which I never heard her speak,
she thanked me and left. The next afternoon,
a flush of embarrassment on her face and neck
ending at the shadow of her cleavage, she approached me
holding in her hand something wrapped in a paper towel.
Extending her offering and pressing firmly into my hand
whatever she had wrapped in the towel, she smiled. I felt,
oozing through the paper, the wetness of two apricots,
overripe, their skins of rosy yellow splitting, bleeding
onto my palm the sweet and sticky substance of a pass.


Larry D. Thomas

Posted over on Larry D. Thomas Blog Site