P: The Pink Towel

You looked fantastic in that pink towel.
It was my spare towel, for guests' use,
but really it was your towel, for you
were my only guest:

after we had condemned the bed
and you had to get to where you should have
been,
we would take a bath, and you would dry
yourself
with the pink towel, always starting by
wrapping it round you.
It was the perfect colour for those moments.
You wore it then like you wore your own skin,
you never looked softer, never more naked.

After you had discreetly done the twist for
your back
you would lay the towel on the bath edge,
perch there, drying your legs, your feet and
toes.
That was the saddest moment. Those were
the last rites
said over the corpse of the afternoon.
I knew then
that you would dress, and with the warmest
kisses you would leave
for the official dinner with the man that you
were cuckolding.

In the space you left, wrenched from the
bosom of the evening,
all that was left of you for me to touch
was that towel, hanging damply from the
bathroom door,
shivering with the touch of your body.
Because it contained so much of your
nakedness,
I never wanted to wash the pink towel,
but I always gave in, so that you might have
it fresh
for the next time. Even when I didn't know
whether that time would come, whether even
it should come.

I wonder if I ever told you
that once upon a time, a long time
before all this happened, a time when we
were sensible,
the pink towel was white. It was only my
washing it, badly,
bachelor fashion, that gave it your perfect
colour:
my towel, the red one, must have slowly
bled into the white, until it became the colour
it was,
the colour of your skin when I rose from your
body
in those moments before you had to leave
for the place and the man
you should never have left.