There is a girl in my cabin. She sits on my 70s brown, velour *****-couch with her long legs tucked beneath her like folded promises. She wears nothing but a pair of wool socks and an old, flannel shirt of mine. The wood fire blazes. Her honest blond hair cascades to the small of her lovely back. Her skin is the flawless pink of an unexpected spring sunrise. Her eyes are emeralds that blaze like novas when we make love. Botticelli might have painted her. I am reading Harrison to her aloud. She imbibes his words like a toddler learning language for the first time. I light her cigarette and she laughs, radiating the shameless pleasure only the very young experience. She expects nothing of me, but this one evening, and that is all she will get. She tells me her name; she is all of twenty-one. Perhaps I am a ***** old man; perhaps I am incorrigible; perhaps I will burn in Hell; perhaps I am a casualty of Eros; or, perhaps, I am simply still alive. - mce