Canal Street

She stood on the balcony over-looking Canal Street, her bathrobe wrapped carelessly around her lithe body. She leaned forward against the railing, oblivious of the slipping terry cloth revealing her pink-tipped breast, chin in her hand, watching.
The bed lay unmade behind her, the sheets rumpled and twisted around his body as he lay sleeping, unaware that the light saw his entire body, exposed. The fan whistled softly as the air caressed his skin gently under its whispered command.
The parade passing below was ignorant of her magnificent presence, of the perfection the horses and riders and trumpets and glorious little miniature men and women did not look up to appreciate. The sun’s golden rays did not even stop to kiss the face of this goddess, passing instead onto the balconies lining the west bank of the canal. Neither did the sour-sweet scent of the incense rising from the hand of the cloaked priest soar so high as to intoxicate her senses, dismally resigning itself to the less-preferred undeserving people lining the sidewalks.
A sigh escaped from her lips, its inaudible words sharing with the world the night of bliss in a moment. Negligent of the white folds of her robe, she leaned back and stretched to pull a bit of cotton from the clouds, the perfectly preserved Venus of days past on display for all who never knew she existed.
The sheets behind her rustled and she turned, a heavenly smile floating softly about her mouth. Moving away from the view into the microcosm that is Canal Street, she stepped back into the unbounded space of their world, the soft white pile of terry cloth on the carpet behind her the only evidence that she really had touched the clouds.

(c) Brianna Grantham 2005