The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

I’m sitting at my desk in my shirtsleeves under a hideous gaslight, smudged in pencil, dreaming of the long map of your body unscrolled across my unmade bed. A map I’ve nowhere near finished charting, though I know a few landmarks well enough to dream on. Your hills and vales, your valleys and mounds, your wicked eyes. You’re an endless serpentine ladder to paradise, and I wish I could coil your hair in my hands and climb you like that great mountain in Nepal where countless explorers have died in ecstasy searching for the peak. I am mixing my metaphors horribly, but longing does that to a man, and you already knew I was a terrible poet. I’d fall back on a better one and pass his work off as my own, except you read far too widely for that to work. “License my roving hands, and let them go, before, behind, between, above, below …” O my Mab, my newfound land! Is John Donne on your list of classic literature? He is probably considered too indecent for females. Certainly he’s no help to a gentleman’s peace of mind either, especially when dreaming of you, my lovely map, my unclimbed ladder …

Wow