Bethan Roberts

What else can make him real, except for my words on paper?

I lay in my bed, picturing cleansing torrents, thinking of Shakespearean heroines beached on foreign shores, their past lives washed away, facing brave new worlds.

I suspect that you know about desire, about the way it grows when it’s denied,

They wore well-cut jackets and walked with their hands in their pockets and their long fringes falling over their faces, whereas the boys I knew (and these were few) sort of charged toward you, looking straight ahead. No mystery to them. All up front.

I thought immediately of that wonderful Greek boy with the broken arm in the British Museum. The way he glows with beauty and strength, the way the warmth of the Mediterranean exudes from him (and still he manages to blend perfectly with his British surroundings!).

It’s a bad habit, this writing things down. Sometimes, I think, a poor substitute for real life.

but aren’t objects of beauty there to be worshipped? This museum provides respite from the trials of everyday life, does it not? Peace and reflection are here, for those who seek it. A little like a church, wouldn’t you say?”

But not nearly as suffocating, I thought. Whatever else this place does, it does not condemn.

I laughed. “For a policeman, you’re very romantic.”

“For an artist, you’re very afraid,” he said.

My answer to that was to kiss him hard on the mouth.

I dreamed I was on a gondola, going far out to sea while the two of you waved to me from the shore. There was no way of reaching you, because in the dream I was back where I started: I couldn’t swim, and was afraid to go in the water.

Do you believe?”

“Not in any god who condemns so many.”

“So many of—your kind?”

“Of all kinds.”