X

 

1.

In the realm of the body, it was pain that let the boy win at tennis. My desire—for us, for life, for everything—laid him bare. And so it made excuses for itself. It chased itself out of the room—but on the way, it got stuck under my skin, my bone, my muscle.

 

2.

The “rhapsody, the self-surrender” that Woolf’s Lily Briscoe sees “on so many women’s faces”: the “rapture of sympathy.” James Ramsay sees it, too: “they look down, at their knitting or something. Then suddenly they look up.”

 

3.

The pain contained me. It allowed me to stay still, to protect what we had.

*   *   *

I could still be good. I wanted to be good!

*   *   *

For I am nothing if not companionable. I like to keep them company, these ambivalent, suffering men.

 

4.

The pain eventually went. But the hunger, the leftover; where could it go?

*   *   *

Elsewhere, when I found myself looking out of the frame—where he needed me to be less, and I wanted him to be more—I both made myself smaller and turned myself up, so as to turn him up, too.

*   *   *

I filled him up with my desire. I took bellows to the fire.

 

5.

Give me more. Be more! Satisfy me.

*   *   *

Here, let me help you. We will stage a play together.

 

6.

Fuck me. Yes, fuck me!