Pool_2

hand, toward the floor. Stiff kneeled shuffling interrupted the death-like echoic sub sounds that just seem to live in raw stone cells, as if they were the dark side of sounds in a sea shell, coldly unsympathetic and unnerving. Stilted breathing approached the floor. You could tell by a subtle quality of sound change in this sensory vacuum. One's own heartbeat was the only competition to the rhythm of sighs. "Katharine... my Caitlin, ..." the young man's lips were pressed upon the floor at an angle against abrasive cement below the dense solid oak door. Opening the ever closed oaken portal was impossible from this side. Just as well. Food was passed by a slot. Door opening meant flogging. "Pssst. Katharine." Two years had passed in this way. Two more would still. His ear strained to silence below the heavy wood, as he assumed she did so in kind. Lips pressed sideways against cold concrete. That hardness was welcomed, though it pained the knees, as it aided the flight of his soft bidding, spiritual words of bonding from bondage, prayers between two children. Only the late hour and the privacy of their language secured them. Their jailers most likely welcomed these whisperings as self torture - and, besides, it was a good excuse for regular whippings. Whips were a part of the hollow black draped landscape. What does a poet do with this world? A world of torture. Scansion, finding meter in his lashings. Gavin preferred dactyl. The numb parts of his back provided the unaccentuated beats. "Your breasts are lovely," he floated to her. "Gavin!" as if embarrassment were possible in a dark dungeon, hers no different from his. Her propriety was not then nor ever compromised. Yet coyly, "That's naughty. You have never seen my breasts, anyhow."