The Portrait of Meekness by Togrul Ahadov

Every Friday we met at about 5
and walked our way to our cafe. Every Friday we ordered two large cups of tea each and had a two-hour-long chinwag. But that Friday I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t attend to the conversation with usual ease and lightheartedness. No. I was distracted. I couldn’t take my eyes of her.

She was a pure image of lust. Bent over a phone or a book – I would go as far as to say that it was definitely a book – she looked so pacific as though she hadn't noticed all the din about her. She had this air… not of oblivion of the hubbub that practically shrouded her, but rather her disparagement of it, as if she hadn't deigned to pay any attention to it. I rather thought she was a teacher…

Not much of her face was seen – just the eyebrows, black as pitch and opaque. A prim rivulet of her hair, soft and sleek, strong-dark-coffee-coloured on top and gradually melting into creamy gold somewhere at the level of her ears - neatly fell a bit lower her bare shoulders. Her shoulders…you could say a lot about a woman by her shoulders, I thought. They were round, fresh and white with a hardly tangible pinky hue. You could say they weren't used to exertion. You could even assume they were used to something completely different… The rest of her body was hidden under a simple, humble white and blue dress embellished with  flowers. It's long  sleeves only subsided at wrists, exposing elegant hands with facile fingers nibbling away at a muffin. Not thin. I wouldn't go as far as to denigrate her calling her that…no…there was flesh, but not a bit of it redundant…she was sylphlike and supple, that's it! And below a tiny round table that she had her elbows on her ankles could be discerned, just her ankles; everything else was concealed from sight under that almost ethereal dress of hers. I kept looking under the  table to steal a glance of those ankles. She was  consummate desire itself  with all of her covered, but still felt.

I was observing her thus when she lifted her face towards me. I couldn’t quite make out anything beside her eyes in that fleeting instant. Behind large, round glasses a pair of nebulous light-grey, almost blue, eyes enticed you to take a plunge in them and be at their mercy. They were not radiant but rather serene and sort of caring looking, condescending. Those eyes seemed absent...she wasn’t looking at me. I doubt if she even saw me. The girl went back to her reading. But not until I caught sight of her unctuous, succulent full cherry lips and a little mole above the upper lip.

And with all that she was a paragon of meekness and chastity,  there was no consciousness of enticement in the way she held herself. She looked innocent, and for that so much more alluring.... Then the friend nudged me. The spell was broken.