Versailles

Eros

It cuts through.

Once upon a time, that's how it was. The chandelier's facets were unpolished stone. The fountain's water was sludge in a swamp.

From the ceiling, against the sky. The shining thing cuts through. A light blooms, a current tugs, the human body works to escape its tether.

You can feel it tugging. Not love, not hope. The opposite of hope, really. There's no future in Eros, only this. Behind pleasure, the body moves backward.

On the palace floor a pattern of light and shadow. On the water in the basin a flicker of sun and shade.

Backward, the body says. You feel it pulling.