CORSICA BY SOTIRIS GONIS
I have no illusion that you will ever know of my presence; the echo of my name has long since reverberated among the walls of this eternal city.
I lie on my back, the sweat of the night slowly evaporating from the cheap bedsheets of a second-rate hotel we rented yesterday night. I look at the cracks in the walls, humidity liquidating and clogging them like plaque building up in the inner walls of arteries. The heat and aridity of this place seem to suck out the moisture from anywhere else. Like the flesh deprived of a steady bloodstream, or joints invaded by arthritis, the building shrinks and contorts from within. Your eyeballs tremble slightly underneath the thin eyelid marked with blue and coral web of miniscule lines. I look at your navel, this imperfect crater of concentrated desire. I brush past your smooth and warm lower abdomen, it makes me think of the long, feathery grasses. Moving in slow motion, they create an engulfing and ephemeral blanket of softness; visual pleasures become haptic experiences. I glide just a few inches above them in a state of complete weightlessness; mesmerised by the humming, rustling, drowsing noise. I see the warm light of the afternoon, brisk golden flashes of the window reflections merge into one with the lightning streaks inside my closed eyes. I reach down and with a fistful of dry soil, I fall back on the sheets. I open my eyes again. Without touching I sense the coarseness of your pubic hair underneath my fingers, the sensation intensified to a point I can separate each and every bristle.
I go on the balcony suspended above the calm surface of the Mediterranean sea . In this in-between state when the sun is no longer here but its light remains, everything is covered in a soothing navy hue. I look down and see my face, the dark water beneath shiny and smooth like a silver mirror. The sea seeps into my orifices, I feel the cold, salty liquid running through me, sinking in, weighting me down. The balcony cracks and my fingertips clutch around the balustrade; the metal depresses under the pressure. I turn and everything becomes black, I throw off the blankets and feel the slow breeze on my moist skin. I hear your slow and rhythmic breath just beside me.
Photography : Sotiris Gonis
Text : Ania Mokrzycka