Sexing the Cherry

Before I could answer she pulled out a book and looked under 'S' in the index. She read out loud: 'Smiling is one of the earliest signs of love. If someone smiles at you, be sure they have another intention.'

I think I may have missed the world, that the one I've seen is a decoy to get me off the scent.

when we read in the cool orchard, we did so sitting back to back.
I liked to feel the snake of her spine.

He looked surprised, I don't know why. As your lover describes you, so you are.

Whenever he turned his back to leave I always stretched out my hand to hold him a moment, but his shoulder-blades were too sharp to touch.

That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated..

They took a vote and unanimously agreed to be put to death. The monk and the whore shot them all and found themselves alone. They would have to begin again. Wearily they climbed into bed.

Very soon I found the outlawed guitars and mandolins. They were hung high on the wall, and underneath was a fierce inscription describing them as: 'INSTRUMENTS OF LUST AND FURY'.

I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams. And perhaps such a thing is enough. To be a muse maybe enough.

I wanted to tell him things, to tell him I loved him and how much I’d missed him, but thirteen years of words were fighting in my throat and I couldn’t get any of them out. There was too much to say and so I said nothing.