The Poem and the Autograph

The gallery was quiet except for the echo of my footsteps on the wooden floor. I stopped in front of some large Pre-Raphaelite painting, not really looking at it, just lost inside my own thoughts.

I heard someone else’s footsteps, without paying much attention to them, the sound of a woman’s heels. The footsteps stopped next to me. I could feel her presence without looking around.

‘You like this one, I can tell,’ she said. ‘You seemed so absorbed in it.’

‘Mmm….’ I nodded, not really wanting a conversation.

‘I wasn’t sure about speaking to you… I know what you… people like you… you need privacy, silence.’

I turned. She was young, smiling, wearing a long raincoat and a beret. I noticed high-heeled shoes and bare legs, before I turned back.

‘Only I saw you, last night… at the reading.’

This time when I turned back I looked into her eyes. ‘Oh, you were there?’

‘Yes,’ she smiled this time. ‘I loved it. I’ve always loved your work, always wanted to meet you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. This time I meant it when I smiled.

‘I….’

‘What?’

‘It seemed a good idea at the time, when I saw you come in here.’

‘What did?’ I noticed, for the first time she had a bulging shoulder bag, she put it down on the floor. She took a pen out of her pocket.

‘I wanted you to sign one of your books for me, but they are all at home.’

I shrugged, apologetically and she handed me the pen.

‘So could you sign this, instead?’ she said, unfastening he coat with trembling fingers.

‘I thought….’ Underneath the coat she was naked. ‘Like that poem of yours… the one you read yesterday, at the reading?’

I nodded, recalling the poem about once writing a poem on a woman’s naked body; then I signed her body.

Later that same night, I wrote a new poem, just for her, across her naked body and then, much later, I signed her copies of all of my books as well.