by Lyrian Fleming
The world fell in flavours over her lips, which she used instead of fingertips to define trust.
The route to work divided into Flavours With A Tick (tangy metallic of the guard rail attached to the staircase; sharp screw-up-her-face-flavour of the pedestrian crossing button; bitter promises in the bedroom of her first skim flat white). Flavours To Beware Of came in categories she categorised just so (seventeen salts on the hard currency required for the bus ticket; stale musk on the mouse used by the man in the next cubicle; bitter citrus comedy of overflowing newspapers).
Her man (because she must have had one) used to look at her with one brow lifted while she dressed in the mornings. A quick flick of her tongue, eyes closed, and an ensemble of pleated skirt in deep maroon, dusty peacock blue ruffled blouse with keyhole at the tip of one shoulder, and beads in brilliant aubergine wound around her neck eleven times to stop them dragging on the ground would stare back at him.
I could eat her in that dress, he often thought, or tomorrow’s or yesterday’s.
To her, a banana split of sweet/healthy/heart attack felt like Monday on her calves, but Friday’s demanded something a little more. Intoxicating. Kalamata olives marinated in fresh red chilies accompanied by shiraz deep enough to flow through veins (plunging neckline/highwaistedskirt/shoes to be caught dancing in).
You turned your head after her. Couldn’t help it. Confused, she would part crowded hallways with her cacophony of scents. People melted or moaned loudly at The Stench (beetroot does not go with tuna on workdays), but she never paid them any mind and continued licking the underside of used pens to find which one was hers.
He met her on the footpath (liquorice laced to her thighs/cream dress buttoned to the neck Keeping You Out Today) and bribed her with promises of must-be-experienced gelato combinations for three dollars at the wharf. First there was the part where he muddled her up in the museum of contemporary art – the free exhibitions – her lips fumbling with distraction at the melting green tea. He took her bag (fermented cherries, the kind you find in puddings from the olden days) and they passed ferries.
By the late afternoon she was strung, his marionette, from the ceiling in the centre of the room (there was no place else for dessert). The guests took turns at tasting the spot behind her knee (jasmine tea), her half-chewed fingernails (unsalted cashew nuts), and the braver ones, the full length of her spine (imagination cannot be replaced).
There are things about her he wouldn’t tell. Her secrets laid out, a degustation course for the especially well-bred, while he kept notes on the back of his serviette. It came time to cut her strings when the room was overcome by her lips, all dry and peeling from lack of use.
The world used to fall in flavours over her lips, which she used instead of fingertips to define trust.
