Room is very white in every part, well-proportioned, and breathes conditioned air.

I am a torso of half-roasted meat. Torpid.

Room and I are sharing a day of rest, a day out of the sun, the third of our holiday together. Under her cool breath she supplies the answer to three-down in the crossword puzzle we are doing. Pervading atmosphere of a place. Ambience.

This sets us to swapping words in our different languages. Room’s is Italian and she tells me her real name is in fact Camera. I begin to suspect she’s been taking pictures of me all this steamy afternoon, focusing on me her lens hidden somewhere up there in the Sicilian soffits and catching me in the nude.

To have carnal knowledge of Room I plump up her white pillow and imagine she is Leda and I am the swan.

from Etna’s heat
flowing around my thighs
the melted snows

—From the author’s collection of haibun, Business in Eden (Equinox Press, 2006), winner of the Best Haibun Collection, Haiku Society of American Merit Book Awards 2007; republished here by permissions of author and publisher

Also appears in Haibun Today (24 February 2008)

Bio: David Cobb