The Letter-Perfect Inamorata
a short story
By Julio Peralta-Paulino

I.

In the hour when dawn has long arrived
yet morning still seems a ways away,
Jake – happened to be holding his usual
thoughts and desires in the secret home
that is the sacred temple of self
–sauntered among the thin, early
throng when suddenly his eyes met hers.
Not really noticing her eyes, his glance remarked
silently upon the curvy grace which her blonde hair
breathed with such an easy balance that for a little
while those thoughts and desires escaped his church
and his prayer turned simply to understanding her.

Although he knew inside his truest heart that he
would not ever possibly conquer the blindness that
always holds mankind within ignorance and narcissism,
Jake wanted to undress her façade and
hear the music of her soul.

He reached for her and in that moment he glimpsed
that – unlike so many people – she wore no façade.
She was simply there as he was. Nakedly awaking
to a new day.

In the same instance, her anger as well as her
possessiveness were provoked. The temper came
from his attempted manipulation and the
possessiveness was aroused by her own
need to both charm and regulate those
that might be near to her surroundings.

Before another second could bell she did
unbandage all diffidence and – without even
whispering her name – made herself master
of his imagination.

Just as suddenly, she alerted her two campmates –
which followed her leading trail – and one did
secure her dominance with the binding clasp of
an overpowering embrace while the other did
make her supremacy irresistible with a
bewildering thrashing given in the form
of lilting her heavy imaginary lumber
upon his until then disengaged side.
Left center and right, he was trounced
and truly entirely under her command.

Of course, he could not understand it
wholly as it all took place in seconds.

Later, however, she started to speak
her instructions.

He had not known such forceful sweetness.
It is myself, he contemplated, with the
foolish desire to have some intimate
detail with a captivating acquaintance.

As he made his way home, he thought
of other women that had stayed in the
sensations of his mind. Some he still
considered in the category of muse or
some mystical appellation. Jake was a
photographer and in all fact he had set
out to perhaps capture some images and
instead was bewitched by an unexpected
beauty.

It was not himself in control and to amply
give proof of her power she positioned between
his steps the need to urinate when his vision
became poisoned with the lusty venom of some
other gentlewoman.

Unfortunately for Jake, it was a big town and
there were a couple of possible inspirations
that he could have easily employed to distract,
to daydream with as it were.

She would have none of this and soon enough
he found himself holding fort by the sapwood
with the piss flowing much to his chagrin as
he could only hope that the passing lady would
have some intimation of the fact that Jake was
being controlled by the girl that had beforehand
mesmerized and emphatically made him hers.

Entering the building just off Madison Avenue,
he thanked the heavens that there was not an
attendant at the door, for he felt the quick
need to be alone and not have to make small talk.

As he unjacketed and tried to jail the feeling
of helplessness, there she was once more, even
more powerful than before with clear and
– to his ear– beautiful nearness.

She wanted him, presently, to give proof of himself.
Not of the shadow he would freely show anyone but of
the legitimate contradiction that had made him reach
out for her and at the same time had made him hide
from her fluttery attack.

He was only capable of trying to escape,
but he could not elude her even as he gave
up on the afternoon and turned his pillow to slumber.

II.

Jake pondered upon the petition
and even within his sleeping hours
the ying and yang of himself he sought
to place into the translation of sound
was yet far from being phrased.

A few days later, he tried to imagine
what to say to her, knowing all too well
that he would most likely be tongue-tied
for having gone such a long time without
an actual conversation.

Taking pictures and working on just the right
exposure took up most of his time. He could
spend hours on an image he might be into at
the moment. To him, it was normal. To him,
it was the only way to infringe against
the commonplace photographs.

His dealings with magazine editors
and vendees were usually concise and
contained only hints if anything at
all of the reality beyond photography.

He didn’t live alone, but the couple
he shared the upper east side duplex
apartment with were sure talkers yet
their conversations did nothing for
his pictures. After a few months,
he had pretty much heard everything twice.
After a few years, well, it might be safe
to say he felt a lot more at ease when silence
filled the spaces between himself and the couple.

The olden saying, which suggested that for good
neighbors a person requires good fences, seemed
to him at the heart of what he himself was trying
to define for her about himself.

Still, that was vague and vagueness although
widely accepted in chit chat and unachored chatter
was not the choice he wanted to bring to her balanced beauty.

Not at all. Jake wanted something specific,
something that would create a special understanding
between her that could cause or consequence his
being to float, to flutter all without any nearness,
without even ballooning the usual sensations or seductions.

The question grew in his quest to please
this pretty ring girl that had him going round
after round chasing the shadow he would otherwise
let be as if the fine sand of coffee grounds at
the end of the cup’s beach-wave.

And the question asked, should it ever be that
one soul may truly know itself without some type
of distortion, without some type of dream?

Are we all both tender and cruel, are we all
both trapped and craven, are we all both trumpet and crossed?

There was no question in his heart that humanity
could just as well save say some wilderness,
some forest or allow it to incinerate.

He imagined saying, there is no truth about
me that is not also true of yourself.

And although this was true, he knew that it
was not wholly true for he could see clearly
that there was something better, something
brighter in her that created or granted her
that power over him which he could not turn away from.

Turning over the thought of himself,
he decided exactly what he would summarize into her intellect.

Without melancholy or regret, he said the words into
his own ear from imagination’s voice;

I might want to love you and already adore you,
but my emotion and my adoration are subjected
to a searching for this talent I once had and reflex,
point and shoot, or Polaroid it is always eluding me.

As your might has relegated my own will to this
simple dance which responds unreflective of itself
to your whim, I am enslaved by the occupation that
is my vocation and have been ever since I was a
child and found that a little box could inhale
light and exhale art.

I took my first pictures when I was twelve.
There was a class trip to the Statue of Liberty.
Some sleek Kodak with an easy cartridge.
Seeing them blossomed forth and developed,
I realized there were more than the waking,
dream, and day-dream world I had known.
There was a fourth world and it was fast in movement,
so fast that often there’d be a blurry slide
gliding here and there. That fourth world came
with hollowed edges and darkness. Negatives.
Negatives which could be, I later found,
manipulated and expanded.

As he moved to continue this imaginary speech,
he opted against it for an overwhelming lust
of brevity had taken hold of his desire.

She wouldn’t want such a long and labored explanation.
Indeed, he articulated silently, she would want some
dewy-eyed look at the dawn which starts his proverbial day.

It was then that he worried she might have
already heard all that he’d thought as the train of
sentiment and persuasion did trail back
to the station of anxiety.

III.
They were as close as a man and a woman
could be within those first few found days
of fantasy and flutter and for proof he poured
finally the untamed wisdom of himself
into a note which read;

Sovereign of my soul, it was the salvation
of love’s slavery that brought me to seduction
and it is the serpent of temptation which brakes
and brawls for some unknown beyond within myself
and within the snaps, stills, and prints which
might not ever be if I were to always belong
to your mighty sweetness.

In the due while she wove to wear her honeyed
tyranny and consider his justification, Jake
became habituated to her bewitching regulations
and romance. So much so, that the day in which
she took him for cure and benedict, he became
despairingly desperate when there was neither
sign of her sashay nor of her declarations.
Withdrawn and feeling withered from the fear
of not having her, Jake returned to the four
poster, to perhaps dream of her balanced beauty,
reluctant to race inside reality alone.

He awoke from blurred dreams and ambrosian longing
to her voice as near as his own. She was there and
her words said yes and promised that all the possible
pictures would be as they should.

They wore bands yet never married, together
the music of their love traveled lightly and
when they held hands there was a lodestar logic
humming brightly into forever.

He’d say, once in a while, you made that dream
of mine come true and she’d say, here and there,
maybe one of these days I will tell you my name.
Written in New York City during the later days of May.
Model pictured is a girl named Madisyn except where
obviously it's someone else.