I asked Ron what temptation was. As I asked, I watched the rising steam lifting gracefully from the heap of noodles, curled so perfectly, wound close and together. The lighting was dim in the restaurant and the smells were smoky and hot and spicy. My fingers were cold, my hand was warm, and I remember cherishing that feeling. Loving that feeling- the feeling of feeling two contradictory things at once, the feeling of loving two things at the same time.

I asked him what temptation was. He peered through the haze, squinting to discern whether I wanted a serious answer or a non-serious one. I looked him straight in the eyes. I carefully shuttered my face, counted the fluttering of my lashes and looked at him through the steam. I could see him struggling to come up with an answer. I stayed quiet. He finally sighed and said that temptation was the promise of a lie, the power to steal someone away.

As he thought aloud, I saw the steam drift lazily into a twisting, serpent-like Chinese dragon, with twirling whiskers, staring, snarling at me, and challenging me with flaring nostrils. Engaged in non-verbal combat, my hand fighting to stay relaxed we both stared steadily, creature and monster, eye to eye, even as my boyfriend’s face melted into a sea of red and warmth.

Later that night, feeling the warmth of his body reach out, seeking mine from under the covers, I shuffled away and schooled my breathing, waiting for the heat to stop being insisting. I took ten, twenty breaths, starting again from one once I reached twenty- I did it till I lost count, and then I counted once again- just in case. Then I got up and crept out of the room, not looking back even once. I stood near the fish tank, watching the fluttering gills of the resting catfish at the bottom. I stood there, letting the gargling of the filter flood my senses, louder and louder- and then I let myself think of temptation.

My temptation is to let go, to run free and fall. Fall, fall till I’m freefalling.

I did not tell Ron that he was not the first one I asked to define temptation. I asked the man with the greying hair first. I wouldn’t call him my lover, or my partner. He is a writer. A married, twenty years senior writer. A married man with children, a dog and a mortgage. He has me, too. We rarely talk about that. I am his editor, his proof reader- a young, twenty something fresh graduate who stresses too much and talks too less.

We have lunches together. A place of his choice, always. Coffee houses, cafés and the like. He detests Chinese and Thai. We talk about work, about our lives, about much more. He encourages me to ask questions. There is never a lull in our conversations. I ask mundane questions, questions I’ve never asked, personal questions, and one day, feeling specially daring, I asked him about temptation.

He paused. He doesn’t pause much. He always gives his answers carefully, thinking and then speaking. I have never seen him pause, though. He paused and stirred his coffee. Decaf, always. He looked up at me and spoke. Our gazes locked and heat pooled in my stomach. My fingers trembled and I had to bite my lower lip to keep it still. I wanted to look away, to hide under the table, to breathe till my face cooled down. He likes me to look at him while we talk. I didn’t look away.

He said temptation is giving power to something else, something that breaks our free will to resist. When I asked him, I looked at him over a slice of red velvet cheesecake, through clear air spiced with the fragrance of coffee and cinnamon, and I let everything fall away but him, and everything was background, but us.

The tips of his fingers touched mine, stayed and then twitched away. He said he wasn’t my temptation, because he’d never make me leave.

I tempt him all the time.

I am self-destructive, giving into impulses, jumping and falling and waiting to see what and who falls after me. He is the one who steps in and catches me and holds me before I jump. He scolds me, lets me cry and doesn’t let go. My temptation keeps me from giving in.

My temptation is my saviour.

Until now I'd lost all hope in reason

Blankets of disaster tighten the rope

Swift is the pain, happiness is treason

The darkest valleys have the smoothest slope

Something steals time, I find myself shortchanged

Within the trade minutes steal miles unseen

I see that fate surely became deranged

Leaving me to know that I'm still unclean

Darkness becomes ideal from depths below

Twisting twirling compensating the lie

Hope in more than myself lets loose the crow

Winged beast hungry for souls will not comply

Although fallen heroes cancel decay

I find strength in being risen from pain

The land was barren,

the sky was black.

Inside,

I was on my back,

peeking through

the gaps in your

curtains.

White flutters.

Our eyes brown.

Your sheets

fighting snow

to reflect

errant photons.

Darkness failing

to stay still.

You pull my hips.

Kneel between me.

Place my knees

about your waist.

Fall forward and

pin my arms.

I inhale the bramble

of your chest.

Lips funnel

beneath your ear.

Fill me up.

It's a new year and we have big plans for Prose. We want to share greater transparency with you all, and share a list of promises, or guarantees, that you should expect from us. Cue the Prose Charter. This is a formal document that tells you, the user, what you should expect from us. We pride ourselves on being available to communicate with you and these are the standards we have always tried to stick to behind-the-scenes. With transparency being one of our key focuses this year, we thought it only fair to share these with you. 

What Our Prosers Should Expect From Us:

Customer Service:

1) Emails coming into us will be answered within 24 business hours.

2) Messages received in the direct message inbox within the app under the Prose account will be answered within 24 business hours.

3) Social Media direct messages will be dealt with within 24 hours.

Content and Contests:

1) Users should expect 3 blog pieces from Prose per week either on the Prose app or blog.theprose.com on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays

2) Users should expect a new Friday Feature each week, unless this isn’t possible due to public holidays or unforeseen circumstances.

3) Users should expect a Prose Challenge of the Week to be posted every Monday morning (GMT).

4) Users should expect a bi-monthly newsletter that showcases user posts along with what’s going on around theprose.com

5) Unless otherwise stated, winners of “premium challenges” (read: challenges with a prize) will be announced and notified within 48 hours of the challenge expiring.

6) Users should expect Prose to like their Prose posts on Twitter so long as they tag @theproseapp, within one working day. (We will also RT at our own discretion.)

Technology:

1) Users should expect the Prose team to forward all bugs to the tech team within 1 working day or less.

2) Once those bugs are logged users will be updated as soon as possible re the status of the bug fix request. (Due to the nature of bugs, we cannot give an exact turnaround time for the resolution of these bugs.)

3) Users should expect any feature suggestions to be considered by the team, and implemented where financially and developmentally viable.

What can Prosers do for us?

Prose has big plans for the future shape of your words. For us to continue building a social network for writers like no other, there are certain things you can do for us to ensure that Prose grows as big and beautiful as intended.

1) More engagement (bookmarking, sharing, commenting).

2) More thoughtful comments, to further help the community grow and succeed as writers.

3) More social sharing. (The more you share your Prose on social media, the more readers you will find).

4) More time spent reading and enjoying others’ work.

5) More words - We’d love to see longer posts, poetry or prose.

6) More reviews - We crave reviews for the app in Google Play and iTunes. The more reviews we get, the more new writers and readers will interact with and follow you.

7) More boundary pushing by trying out new genres and different portals to usual. Explore!

8) More promoting your own book in the Indie Portal. We don’t limit what you do, so do it.

The land was barren, the sky was black. The darkness of society’s arid opinions enveloped them in the duskiness of hate. Why couldn’t they be left alone by the sniping, bombarding insults of others castigating and criticizing them? It had nothing to do with who they were but still they were rebuked and berated by mindless bigots carrying the onerous dusty baggage of their own beliefs. Surely, it must bog these naysayers down to target such shallow, twisted and dark thoughts toward the two lovers. Such paralyzing animosity would rot the souls and tarnish the worth of the persons guilty of such malignant perceptions.

For he was black, black as burnished ebony, with muscular arms polished to a sheen, bringing light to the darkness. Shiny dark dreadlocks cascaded down his back tempting her to lick them and engulf them with her moist, glistening lips, absorbing their sensuality. A tiny diamond sparkled in his ear, drawing her to its luminescence. His tattoo was hidden by the blue-blackness of his lustrous skin which reflected her body. And his dazzling skills enticed her again and again to the brim of her passion enlightening her that there was more to be explored.

Her skin beguiled him with whiteness as bright and pure as snow. Her satiny skin brought a beacon of glowing sun to his darkness and together, they shone in its radiance. She was aglow with the lust and love that she had for this man. She noticed that his skin flashed copious colors other than black as she observed him with an artist’s eye, seeing red, yellow, blue and white bringing out the lustrous nature of his skin. Their love was not barren or arid but moist and fertile. As they explored each other’s bodies, they reveled in the pleasures and bliss of their differences and yet, their sameness. His tongue traced a slippery line down to her center bringing her to a phosphorescent hotness again and again. She touched him and stroked him passionately until every part of him glistened with wetness.

The dawn of acceptance brought light to the darkness and ended the barrenness,

dampening the diminishing prejudice of humanity. For the love and joy

of the couple dappled racists’ worlds in sunshine, lessening their shadowed thoughts. The sun rose once again showing that the dead of night would no longer prevail.

Something happened on the day he died. Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside. Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried. That place we hide deep down inside the darkest confines of our subconscious mind just may be intertwined with the superconscious or divine. I bet Bowie's soul's agreeing with that line more or less at this time. Let us remind ourselves to rewind the inner-hell to the chapter before that spell was cast, when all characters comprising this curious cosmic cast reveled in the inner-shelf of pure creative fun and formless, absolute Self. May Bowie's soul channel through these words that are wrote on this map aboard our boat afloat on the cosmic ocean of no-sin, just all-knowin' and absolute justice, omniscience and omnibenevolence, eternal return and primordial elegance. Let us keep rowing, and rest/rejoice in peace, Master Bowie.

Tearing flesh and ripping wounds render me helpless.

In the naked cover of the moonlight, enemies gather

To the smell of blood.

A lion cannot battle wolves alone. Like I

Cannot hope to defeat this certain death.

Awaiting in the shadows.

If only I could molt, like a moth, and fly free.

I would soar away from certain calamity and fall

Into the welcoming arms of nature.

In the breast of mother earth, shaded from the hateful

respite. Human nature is the ugliest of them all.

Lending only brutal caresses.

Yet still I seek the ease that love would give me

In the eyes of a lover. The passion and the hunger

That weakens the will.

A touch, a flame, a burn. Insides curdling into a

rotten waste of hopeful longing. The crave of

a sensual touch.

In the growing shadows, the scent of death is

wafting closer. The faint smell of corruption and

shattered bones.

The cool damp earth comes up to meet me and

blackness swallows all sense of what things

used to be.

The skin sheds away. The little memories play

upon the mind, and nothing is left when the

dream sets in.

He watched her in her deepest sleep

And longed to lay beside her.

The coziness of the covers and plushness of the bed were all that he desired.

That and the softness of her creamy, white skin and the smell of her long, chestnut locks.

He put on his coat, his scarf, and gloves while his warmth the whipping, cold wind did mock.

He opened the door and braved the gusts as he prepared for his day.

The doctor was waiting and he'd soon return home, knowing not what he would say.

He feared the worst, that his cancer had spread.

How could he tell his great love that he soon could be dead?

He tried not to worry and thought of his wife, the bad and the good they endured.

He thought hopeful thoughts and prayed to God that whatever plagued him could be cured.

As he pulled to a stop, he saw behind him a truck that showed no signs of slowing.

He held his breath and saw all he loved and then a white light brightly glowing.

He gave in to the end and prayed to his God, his soul He must keep,

But not before he returned once more to watch her in her deepest sleep.

shaded homestead, burrowed night

emotions rise, and take their flight;

to poets they are like fireflies,

dazzling jars held before our eyes

but unless you are a clever pen

you’ll be bogging through a foreign fen

and for those whose pleats are lacking flare

nary a wayward man will care