PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

During a long, tiring day of royal audiences (diplomats,

supplicants, two or three prisoners condemned, and a

few wealthy Roman tourists), Pharaoh granted a few

moments to Eugenides, the merchant out of Smyrna, who

who presented to him a small, ornate sandalwood box

(quite a look of frustrated anticipation gathered like a

storm on Eugenedies face when Pharaoh declined, for the

moment, to open the gift); having received the contract to

supply the Army with corn, Eugenedies withdrew a little

less respectfully than he had arrived.  Later, having

returned the rather heavy headdress and the symbols of

his authority (heka and nekhaka) to the Household's

First Chamberlain, and then retired to his private suite of

rooms---in which I, his bath slave, had prepared the

shallow in-floor pool to the temperature, and with the

fragrances, that he preferred.  In compliance with his

standing request, performed my tasks in total nakedness (no

silly inhibitions or societal expectations intruded

here).  He entered, clad only in a common shendyt, which

he removed and tossed over a chair.  Looking at his

unclad beauty, I became tumescent and, in response to that,

he did, too.  Then he opened the box that the Smyrnaean had

given him---lifting out of it a pair of sheer silk stockings,

perfectly translucent except at the heels and toes, where the

doubled weave (a preventative to runs and snags) formed a

very soft opacity.  With them was also the narrow and slender

waist with clasps to hold them up on his legs; and these he

put on in front of me.  Watching him, I felt a very pleasant

sensation in my core.  He stepped into and reclined in the

bathwater, and, very softly, asked me to join him.  He told

me that we had both been very busy with our responsibilities,

although he suspected that mine were more arduous and

tedious than his.  We began to kiss fervently, and our

eager hands wandered---over our sensitive circlers, and then to

our firmly risen lofters, and their very responsive

seamstrings, under and beneath their crowns.  Because our

bodies were already attuned to each other, our e'lations were

almost simultaneous, sevenfold surges at the peak of pleasure,

releasing our sweetnesses to the water's surface.  In this

very private place, far from the throne-room and the other

sites of power's many complicated transactions, he did not

present himself as Ptolemy Caesar Philopator Philometor,

Pharaoh, and the fifteenth of his dynastic line, Lord of the

Two Lands and King above all other Kings, son and heir of

Julius Caesar, Dictator Perpetuo of Rome and of Cleopatra,

Thea Philopatra.  Rather, here, with me, he was my lover and

boyfriend, Kaisarion, who had loved me since we were twelve

years old; with no regard for that interloper from Smyrna, who

had hoped to seduce him with a pair of sheer stockings.

Starward