“If I were a cinnamon peelerI would ride your bedand leave the yellow bark duston your pillow.Your breasts and shoulders would reekyou could never walk through marketswithout the profession of my fingersfloating over you. The blind wouldstumble certain of whom they approachedthough you might batheunder rain gutters, monsoon.Here on the upper thighat this smooth pastureneighbor to your hairor the creasethat cuts your back. This ankle.You will be known among strangersas the cinnamon peeler's wife.I could hardly glance at youbefore marriagenever touch you-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.I buried my handsin saffron, disguised themover smoking tar,helped the honey gatherers...When we swam onceI touched you in waterand our bodies remained free,you could hold me and be blind of smell.You climbed the bank and saidthis is how you touch other women the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.And you searched your armsfor the missing perfume.and knew what good is it to be the lime burner's daughterleft with no traceas if not spoken to in an act of loveas if wounded without the pleasure of scar.You touchedyour belly to my handsin the dry air and saidI am the cinnamonpeeler's wife. Smell me.”

“I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. And I thought if I was going to die I would die with you.Someone like you, young as I am, I saw so many dying near me in the last year. I didn’t feel scared. Icertainly wasn’t brave just now. I thought to myself, We have this villa this grass, we should have laindown together, you in my arms, before we died. I wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone,it’s like a small hard wing under your skin. I wanted to place my fingers against it. I’ve always liked fleshthe colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a Susan, do you know what that flower is? Haveyou seen them? I am so tired, Kip, I want to sleep. I want to sleep under this tree, put my eye againstyour collarbone I just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a treeand climb into it and sleep. What a careful mind! To know which wire to cut. How did you know? Youkept saying I don’t know I don’t know, but you did. Right? Don’t shake, you have to be a still bed forme, let me curl up as if you were a good grandfather I could hug, I love the word ‘curl,’ such a slowword, you can’t rush it...”

“Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?"I didn't say anything.”

“You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.”

“The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion”

“This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.”

“I watched you wake up and try to wake me up too. I could still feel you touch my face and my cheek. I liked the way you brushed my hair back with your hand. I liked the way held onto my hands with your hands. They must have felt a little cold and a little wet but they started to feel warm again when you held onto them. I want you to know that I stayed there with you and held onto you too.”