My golden valentine

In the hypnotic swirl of his golden glitter I dwell, today. Interrupted only- and rather cruelly- by random reality, which prods my forebrain with multimedia precision. I brush it off with all the absent-minded impatience of a woman who waits for the sinful scarlet hour, when she can rush off to meet her lover. Not entirely an analogy, this. For, in the evening, once the mundane proceedings of the day are wrapped up and discarded in virtual plastic, I will run toward my bittersweet rendezvous with my gilded valentine.

He has always made me feel warm ‘n’ fizzy, cool ‘n’ dizzy, I reminisce with a half-smile, enjoying how the anticipation tickles its way down my back. Only a precursor to the night that will be. His dulcet voice, as on cue, will probe something awake inside me; keep me in a suspended state of blushing. I will be shy at first, look at him, from under eyelashes, and mutter that today, ‘Today, we won’t dance. We’ll keep our hands to ourselves.’ He won’t argue, but, I know, he will begin singing to me. I can discern how it will feel… so distinctly. Like swimming in a sunny sea of gentle little bubbles that will brush against my skin, soothing the bruises of banality. Like the piquant surge one experiences from an activity as simple as biting into a very virgin plum. The head rush, followed by a state of spent calm. The need for more. Eventually, I will give into his liquid embrace; watch as his fingers massage my throat, decorate it with traces of tranquility. My eyes will shut, opening only sporadically to take in his burnished brilliance. The little glands on my tongue will come alive in a karmic chorus, as they are treated to his serous song.

Quite as suddenly, he will effervesce. Pull me up out of my sweet stupor and begin twirling me about in a rush of auric ardour. Emotions will run thick, reaching an apex of feverish froth...

But, now, as my present fights relentlessly to be transformed into the past, all I have to hold on to is the shimmery, aqueous fabric of contemplation.

The golden hour arrives, ultimately. In my apartment, even as I step into my special outfit for the evening, I feel the vapid walls of the everyday closing in on me, inching menacingly toward my being. They bear rusted needles, poisoned with a serum of pure bromide. Visions of the hoi polloi- dolled up in dirty masks and filthy intent, and barking at me in fluent gibberish- begin to cloud my eyes. But, today, they all melt away like cheap paraffin. They form a puddle on the warm, iodine-rich floors of my absolute nonchalance. They sublimate. Gone; just like that.

The world isn’t a blot upon the universe. Not today. Because, in a few minutes, dressed to the nines in my favourite pajamas, I will meet him. My chilled beer.