Just because it's Monday!! I really enjoyed writing this and have a feeling I may be veering towards prose poetry - or certainly towards the short-short, as in this case. This has been pure indulgence...

RENAISSANCE


A casual acquaintance deepened over lunch and a bottle of wine. We were both in transition, learning new things, stretching our wings, pressing the boundaries. I said I'd sit for him, to help him over his nerves at the life classes he'd just started to attend - what, now? Why not...

In his top-floor flat, lazy winter sun streaked dirty window panes, making the dishevelled bachelor-pad look soft-focusedly romantic. Words that had frothed so easily at the Bar suddenly hushed into hiatus. Determined not to get cold feet, I asked whether, strangely, I might undress in his bedroom. He stood busily making tea, with his back discreetly turned as I re-entered, wearing just an over-sized shirt I'd found thrown over the back of a chair. I loved the feel of my bare feet on the stripped boards, padding lightly but inhabiting the whole space.

Having shed the shirt, I propped myself as casually as I could along the length of a sixties sofa - thankfully not plastic-covered. Gazing around the room with lingering glances everywhere but at him, I resumed a stream of light-hearted babble until I was sure he had finished with the distractions of tea, had gathered his charcoal and pad, had seated himself to begin - and had taken his first look. I breathed deeply to try to get rid of the need to swallow, and thought about things that might keep the goose-bumps at bay - walking the dog; the need to shop.

But it was the rapt expression on his face that did it; the tiny beads of sweat as he worked, the flicker of his eyes between subject and page, the flush that rose high on his cheeks and the almost indiscernible pinch in the brows as he contemplated certain parts. The diffused, watery sun highlighting his features.

All at once, constriction was gone, like shedding skins. I breathed easy...

"Finished", he announced minutes' later, throwing down the charcoal with a flourish. A juvenile excitement stirred me as I hastily re-covered myself with his shirt. I went round, leaned deeply over his shoulder and gasped: On the grainy vellum were three separate drawings - one of lips, one of eyes, one of many hands that had fluttered like butterflies as I spoke. But mainly there were just the words: "You are beautiful - inside and out".

My world was rocked. Suddenly, I was naked.