The Pauper and the Knave

The Pauper and the Knave
By Jamie Williams



The smell was as it had always been, crisp but with an airy fragrance symbolic of Christmas cookies. Christopher held my hand in his sweaty, freckle patched palm and his fingers constantly danced on my peach skin like a cluster of nervous worms.
We fought our way through the teeming masses of broken hearted blondes, grind-lines, even the occasional woman raring to strip off her garments, and eventually found our own little niche far from the world of pulsing rap and vulgar dancing puppets—Though in reality the masses were hardly but ten feet away from our secluded little world.
My pale hand, like that of a child in size, stroked his whiskered and uneven features. Very small brown hair peeked often from his cheeks cautiously, though it always seemed that one side of the whiskers grew faster than its mirrored side. This was a characteristic I loved, for his body spoke for him when words failed—Something I could never quite seem to master
Lost in our own niche, far from time but still it’s unwilling slave, we rocked gently together, cradled by the other’s embrace though not a single not brushed our ears, nor the roar of the rambunctious onlookers disrupt us.
This was my night to forget the fall of the world, the troubles looming in the farthest cornered of my mind, and the loss of my father, even the hours prior to this moment, it was just the Pauper and the Knave locked in the barred embrace of the other.
But deep within I feel the charming trickery of Cinderella seep in: At midnight I could no longer be with my knight, my prince in ivory armor. His soft cologne will disperse from my senses, his warm lips will let mine grow cold, and those arms will rust and the barrier shall fall.
It all seems like a simple dream, knowing that on the dawn of Monday all will be as it had always been.