I would be washing my hair in the silvery-gray kitchen sink as some random celebrity gameshow blares in the background, wearing those tiny blue undies and the tank top I've slept in so many times that it feels just like...

Clouds that hide the moon cast no shadows, and I've got just one lamp on, so that it doesn't get too dark, so that I couldn't see my way around. At this time of the year the windows can stay open all night, and the homely scent of dime-store rosemary swirls around the house with the old wives' whispers of...

Remembrance crosses my mind every now and then, even as I dry up, remembering every time you brandished the comb and pulled out all the tangles, and how my eyes used to screw up with tears when you pulled and it stung. You never meant to hurt me. I'm just about finished and there's this knock on the door. I'm alone and unprotected. It's idiotic, actually, that after all these years I'm still...

Unabashed at the fact that my robe is in the other room, I ask myself who could possibly be calling at this hour. It's late, and my phone is never busy, and I wonder if I paid the electric bill on time. I rarely look out the peephole. That invites curiosity and hesitance, and let hell or high water come in- I'm not really all afraid. So I unlatch the lock and swing open the creaky hinges and am rapidly dealt a sucker-punch to the gut, because the person standing there is....

You are older, more beautiful if that's possible, with the tan and wise, lovely eyes of someone who's seen and done much. And, with my just returning breath, I realize it's been years since you showed up on my doorstep, with nothing but the clothes on your back and a sinful smile on your upturned face. I lick my lips and say....

Hello, stranger, um, hi there, what exactly are you doing at my house, miles away from the civilized world, and what exactly do you want? You agree that salutation is no means of apology, that you forgot to write, and hell, what can you say? The wind is picking up. You may come in.

You step into my self-contained world, where the individual parts of self are compartmentalized into disorganized little pigeonholes, and comment on the abstract art I've hung over the love seat. I mention that yes, it' s one of my favorites, and we make similar idle discussion. It's all very forced and stilted and...

Shallow arts have no merit, as I soon find out, since you've been talking for ten full minutes about your new life, and I have yet to listen to a word you say. All I see if your mouth moving, and I realize that there are really at least ten things I'd rather do with those lips, and not one of them involves the words "How have you been?"

The room is hot, although the temperature has dropped about five degrees, since the open door has yet to be shut, and even as you look me up and down, I suddenly have the irrepressible urge to be wearing much less clothing than I am. You have that effect about you. Slinking doesn't take so much energy when your blood is melting ice, and slides through your veins like quicksilver. You are my effigy, and I want to burn you. Is it so warm here you can't feel the....

Flame glints in your eyes before you kiss me, searingly, and I am suddenly a puddle on the floor. Boneless and shapeless I move to your form, to what you make me even as you pant, since I've stolen your oxygen. Lips and tongues and hands, I am your goddess, and I've been forgotten too long. There is no: How did we get here from there? (The door has since blown half-shut), but rather your depth of decision as to whether to build an alter or a pyre.

My hair is still wet, in your hands, and my heart is in your straight white teeth, so make up your mind and push me back on the bed. The television drones on, unrecognized, and someone out there in the vast obscurity beyond cable has won a million bucks and a lifetime supply of chamois scrub pads. Your fingertips up my leg are more insistent than my fumble to change the channel. All I succeed in doing is turning the volume...

Down on the blankets, down over taut stretches of white skin that you will from here on out store in your photographic long-term memory. Years from now, it will still disturb you that can recall the color of the pillowcases, and the commercial for extra-strength whitening toothpaste that sang in the...

Background of my existence, I can still see the loopy quirk of your grin when I breathlessly announce that I will have to call maintenance tomorrow, I think he needs to oil those hinges. And my hair will be messy and dirty again. I will have to wash it again, the next day, after I ...