I want to hear the man talk

I remember going out to a restaurant with some guy and a friend of mine who brought her little boy along. And suddenly her boy said, “I want to hear the man talk.” Well, that stopped us. Smart kid, I thought. He was fed up hearing her women friends talking all the time, and his own dad was always at work. So he wanted to hear a man talk for a change.

And I remember sitting at the table and that little boy set me off daydreaming, about us. I remembered you kissing my small breasts, my mouthfuls, as if you were speaking every possible language on earth, taking my nipples apart word by word. How you never kissed my mouth without eating it like a pear. And ah, the imagination of those fingers of yours as they went slipping down, and I felt myself coming, as though from a long way off.

I felt the chilled breath of the stars. I could hear the wind that swirls within them, and I felt it coming 4, 5, 6 times over. Then a long thin bird, inside the room, thinner than a feather, flew into my eyes and down the length of my body. And I could feel the soul as it wrapped itself around, and clung. And back out it come! And I heard the rain one time as if something was stepping around outside your window. And I remember the narrow wind of October, and you and those eyes of yours, after having written the words, “They need it. They gotta have it done.”