Heat

It's been a while since I've shared any of my creative writing with you, so here's a very short story that I'm working on this days. This is about the 3rd draft of it, so it is a work in progress, and I'm still not sure if it will be anything more than this or if this is all it will be, but I'll share it with you anyway:

Heat

I look at the watch; four thirty am, and step from the light inside the bar into the darkness outside. The hot intense wind immediately surrounds me, wraps me up, plays on my skin, tries to seduce me with its warm insistent touch. I wish it was you.

For the last two hours I’ve been listening to everything you’ve been willing to share, cherishing every sound passing over you lips, drinking every word like a thirsty traveller would treat water after being lost in the desert. At one point some chairs blew over outside the large windows. It startled us. Broke up the conversation. Your eyes warily sought the scene outside, looking for…. I wouldn’t know, you didn’t say. My eyes reluctantly let go of you and followed your gaze.
“It’s the wind” you said, “It’s picking up.”
Then you named this hot dry sand-filled wind blowing in from the Sahara.

Standing in the street alone, being touched by this wind I search for the word again. Sirocco. Warm. Dry. Intense. Suffocating. Sand. It has the power to drive people mad this wind – or so I remember being told once anyway, in another life so far from this. If you commit a crime when it’s blowing you’ll be judge more lightly. I wonder if the same goes for love. Would you more easily forgive me for falling for you if I blamed the Sirocco?

For two hours I’ve been staring at your lips willing for them to kiss mine, at your hands wanting for them to touch me, caress me – drive me insane. Looking into your eyes for some clue or hint that this might have been on your mind as well. They never revealed anything, your eyes.

The fingers touching my skin and driving me mad are the fingers of the unseen, the stranger blown in across the large ocean. When I step into the street and start walking it is all around me, outside and inside. My dry lips long to be moistened – by the touch of your lips – but my only lover this night will be the one who’ll drive me mad for the next half hour . Insistently by my side all the time while I walk to the hotel. Stroking my skin. Touching my lips till they crack open from dryness. Blowing sand in my eyes till they’re sore and red. I wish I could cry but it won’t let me. I want to scream for help, for someone to give me water, but it’s there as well. When I open my mouth it forces its way down my throat and the only sound allowed out is a croak, a strange and desperate sound from a woman touched by a lover she does not want. I stumble, searching blindly for my way while it teases me, roughs up my hair and just won’t leave me alone.

Thirsty. Dry. Warm. I need... you wouldn’t know, I didn’t say.

I force one foot in front of the other inside this madness that is and walk away from that which will not happen. Walking and waiting for the heat to drive me insane.