#8: katharsis

I could feel her hand on my knee.

"I just wish I could know you better. You are such a puzzle."

She was this warm, light weight, gently squeezing my knee.

"Who are you, Eurymachus?"

There was that prickling of skin when Richard III wooed the widow of the man he killed, hobbling beside her with his oily voice. Her dead husband watched on with cold eyes.

Someone else had come to sit beside Jessica. She turned to him, smiling. "I did not expect you here."

And there beside me, with her hand still on my knee, she leaned in to kiss him in the dark. Then her hand left me, as she palmed his chin and pulled him closer.

Not a finger twitched, as I heard my neighbors making their light passion.

Down below, Richard III was sending a man to slay his brother in the Tower.

"Eurymachus."

The royal brother, in his bath—an unlikely prisoner in that cold place.

"Eurymachus, I'm sorry, but I must go."

And seeing his murderers, he pleads for them to talk to his brother.

"I must go. Promise me we will talk soon. Just you and me. I want to know who you are. Promise me."

Before cutting his throat, they tell him who his brother really was.

"Goodbye."

Much later, I turned to stare at her empty seat, brushing my fingers lightly over the granite. There was still a fading warmth.

With a slight shudder, I began to move on.

—Eurymachus, March 05, 2003