Flames And Ashes

Quick Fiction/Story Fragment found in an old notebook yesterday (and slightly edited today):

FLAMES AND ASHES


How to put this? She'd glow, absolutely glow, after sex. Then, he found that he could bring out that glow just with his words, his attentive listening, his tuning in and drawing her out. At first, he exulted in his success and skills, in her heated responses to his focused intensity. He enjoyed these new shared flames and the joyous visible proof. Later, he found he missed kindling, for him, the hotter joys of bodies and psyches engaged. He missed feeling satiated himself. Too late, he realized that in proving his power to feed her he'd starved himself. But why hadn't she seen that and remedied that for him? Was that even a fair question?


--MD


If you click on the "Fiction" label below, I believe you can see a handful of my other Quick Fiction pieces, among other things, as well.