In A Place About the size of a Confessional--An Opera

Overture--

To anoint is to pour or smear with perfumed oil, milk, water, melted butter or other substances, a process employed ritually by many religions. People and things are anointed to symbolize the introduction of a sacramental or divine influence, a holy emanation, spirit, and power---Christian Worship Practices Definition

Aria--

In the steam he anointed her…a clear bottle of L’Occitane Almond Moisturizing Shower oil…liberally used.  He glazed her skin like the way he felt her eyes glazed him in a gaze.  Not perfect, but rather haltingly…humanly.  Unfamiliar…the way a discovery is made and shared.  Exploring.  Eyes held tight in a gaze but every once in awhile he strayed and let his lens float across her body in a delicious absorption of her…her skin…her colors…her pinks and her pales…and then back to her eyes.

A muted Finale--

In the end, in his briefest memory, he likened it to this:

 Do you remember the times when you saw the horizon glaze into gray, knowing a storm was a’coming?  Do you remember the reluctance in leaving the humid static of the air, and then going out in the rain when it came?

Do you know when a thunderstorm has collapsed over you, darkening the house, tormenting the outdoors, and in a cool and quiet room you can see the shapes and outlines by the flickering light of a scentless candle? 

 

And if you held the heated glass of that candle in your hand…a candle that had been winking for minutes, maybe an hour, shedding sweet wax into a liquid that pooled at the top, a lighter color than below, and if you tilted it the liquid would ebb and flow…

And if you were to blow out the flame in a gray plume and let the warmth radiate through your hands as you stood still in the blackening darkness, the outside world plundering in lightning and thunder, noise and wind breathing warm against the windows and shaking loose in flinging branches and leaves, the heated glass now warming beyond your hands, along your arms and shoulders, and the hail now clamoring and the storm getting more violent, more savage…

…and just as you think the warmth of the candle can cause no further heat you let your finger just barely touch inside the glass, and touch the wax that  is just now beginning to  harden…warmth emanating and holding a hint of heat below… and you plunge into the thin layer, it penetrates into the below and you feel a  hot wet molten warmth that is unlike any heat you have ever known…and it pools against  you, enveloping, sticking to you, heating, hastening, gripping, clutching…and it warms you as you listen to the afternoon moan outside as it shudders and collapses, giving in, giving up…exhausted and wrung from a storm that has raged on the outside…and on the inside.

That is what he remembered…