EXTRACT FOR
Forgotten Bodies
(Giselle Renarde)

Leaning over the sink, she met herself straight on, eye to eye.  She was her own most fearsome competitor, and she would not be defeated by unfounded anxieties.  What was she so afraid of, anyway?  Her looks weren't the big concern, if she was honest.  She always had lovely eyes, huge as a dairy cow's, with thick curling lashes.  Her cheeks were thin without appearing sallow, and her lips bee-stung, plump and deep pink even without lipstick.  She would always have a pretty face.  The thought made her smile, briefly.



If she was brutally honest, she knew what she feared.  She was scared that she'd lost her libido and it would never come back again.



And the real kicker was that it had been an all-at-once loss.  Her sex drive didn't drain from her body over a period of months or years, like honey slowly dripping from an overturned jar.  It was there, and then??"poof!  Gone.  Her body had betrayed her in the most horrendous way possible.  It had forgotten how to love.



The worst of it was that she remembered what it was like to be young.  God, did the juices ever flow back then!  All she had to do was glance at the bulge in any random guy's jeans and her whole body would flush.  She'd spent her late teens and early twenties perpetually red in the face...