André read me even when I was silent. He saw all of me, and he still wanted me. He thought I was beautiful. It was not only something he said, often; it was in his eyes when he watched me undress, whether I was filthy and tired after an afternoon’s work in the garden, or had seduction on my mind. It was in the way he moved around me, considerate and proud, both in public and in private. Or in the way he touched me, as if I were a precious piece of art. He was the only one who could make my body lose itself completely in someone else’s caresses. With him I could let go, fall, and rise again on waves of desire, unafraid of exposing myself at my most vulnerable where the mind trips over the edge of lust and throws the body into the depths of fulfilment.

Karina Szczurek