moonlight on hidden skin

Athens, at the height of summer.

The sun is sinking over the National Gardens, but the city has not begun to cool. An argument travels through the heat in fragments of text. You almost turn back. Then you don’t.

At his house in the Embassy District, a bottle of Cava waits on ice. The fragrance opens in the warmth of reconciliation: sandalwood against skin, amber glowing beneath it. Rose arrives marked with lipstick, romantic, defiant, still flushed from the fight. From somewhere across the way comes a slender trail of smoke.

Night falls, and the fragrance climbs.

Over the dividers. Up the ladder. Into the dark geometry of enormous solar panels, tilted toward the vanished sun. Ruby grapefruit provides a bright, bitter flash; pink pepper gives the composition its spark. Static, danger, desire. Beneath them pulses the low hum of the city.

The panels have stored the day inside themselves. Now they release it slowly: a mineral, solar warmth rising from metal and roof beneath the moon. The temple glows on the hill. A television flickers through an open window. A cigarette burns on a neighbouring balcony.

You are surrounded by evidence of other people, yet entirely beyond their sight.

Under the stars, between the machinery, the city gives you its rarest luxury:

complete and total privacy.