It is what is not there

It is what is not there, she whispered, that is what makes us see. Like silence gives you sound, shadow delivers light. It was siesta time. Spain. Just me and her, turning in hot darkness. Aragon sunshine pierced through the wooden shutters, in bright white slices, cut thick as toast. The rays cast parallel lines on our curves, hips, by our navels. Black. White. Black. White. Our navels ripe as the pile of oranges stacked in a bowl by the bed. Navels: cables of the earth, the seat of wantonness. Later, I turned to hold her, seize the words from the cavern between her lips. But she had fallen asleep, gone elsewhere. It was a week’s holiday, away from London. She called it vacation. And the word worked because it also meant what wasn’t there but vacant, absent, abandoned.