Dear,

I’ve been meaning to tell you how much it means that when I ask you to do it, make love to me, that you do so and without any hesitation. That you ask “quick or slow” as if serving up the dish that is you. That you are a soldier at the ready, a man without inhibitions whose wavy hair I can take hold of and who still surprises me such things of which here I cannot say the likes… but what I mean t and mean to say is that don’t’ go thinking that any of this is lost on me, that is; that I take it or you for granted (I do not). That your Gerwurtsraminer tongue that you silp gently to my tongue to taste ~ the sommelier at the ready ~ it is as gentle as communion and while I should not mix such things up, I do….

You’ve long had me muddling such confines and constructions since that day when, after communion and back in the pew, you kneeled and you kissed me, passing the host from your own mouth into mine and I could I could taste the port-wine blood of Christ still redolent on your lips ~ why such sacrilege this! And then only children, we. I could claim I knew no better, but you… what was your excuse? I, was the perfect picture of innocence; blonde and bobbed and fresh-scrubbed and dressed in my church clothes while you, you were old enough to know better!

You will buy me licorice whips to make up. And after, after you follow me around, only just enough, refusing to be a puppy, refusing (and rightly) to prostrate yourself, but to bring yourself close enough for a kiss but withholding such a tease…. and me, why I was utter insouciance, my bag of black whips hanging from such cherry-red lips that tasted of anise and of fennel and of every Italian spice, you told me; A taster’s tease test. kiss..

Small wonder then that after so long we should be inseparable, coiled as a double-helix strand, tight and woven. “Let no man cast asunder…. “ and so on and so forth…. For all that I have written, love, for all that I may say, I remember that acorn, I remember that day. I remember that first kiss. It was July 25th at about 4:55 p.m , a Monday as the ducks paddled and glided gently by in their pond and the trolleys pushed and steamed underground while we pushed above ground beneath the shade of an oak on this steamy July day.

I walk around the pond. I collect their feathers in an envelope, curled and dark it reminds me of your gentle waves. Tonight I sleep alone and there is everything wrong with that.