The night was ominous from the moment I set out in the carriage with him. I was now a married woman.

The wedding night.  I lowered my nightgown and let it fall down my curious tingling flesh, warm and willing. He left abruptly after a long hard frightened stare at my nakedness. Displeasure and disappointment occupied his face. He recoiled and hastened from the room.

Now I was cold- was I wrong to offer myself, or did my body disappoint him?

Was he not stirred by the sight of my groin and the curve of my hips dipping down between my thighs?

The front of his night shirt did not stir in my direction- it was all too much to take in in the moment.

Morning came and found me still a virgin, not a bad thing-though I had ideas of feeling a certain intrusion and to experience a certain explosion- a burst-  a feel- of pleasure or non-pleasure and then perhaps exclaim; “is that all there is?

The months dribble forward and I remain suspended without ever being touched or float off in wonderment. My wings have never soared beyond my own imagination.

Is he dead or am I a nymph? Now I examine my nakedness with dull eyes- my dead body, still warm, I bleed- that’s how I know I am in the twilight zone.

There is something bleak and beautiful about Scotland- that’s where he took me when I became visibly wan. – Something beautiful but undesired.

Unrequited, I lay on my very cold bed- the days morph into weeks- baths, water, sighs……..

Tomorrow I might die-just because I can.