Luxor

You come and we contain intimate spaces, I wake and find your head beside me on the pillow, I breathe your breath and then you disappear again, till every moment has a meaning and we wait for the right moment to have the right meaning. You stretch me out like elastic and I dread the snap of returning to myself feel the ropes of silence tie me down again.I am the revolution come to pare away the excess flesh you carry close to comfort you. Tear up your settled bed throw out the garden flowers. I am searching for a map to tell me where I am going, as the sun falls I walk along the dusty river past the Temple and the evening crowds of tourists, the Nile flat at my feet with a dark felucca silhouette against an ailing sunset. Later the palm trees rise like sentinels in the perfumed garden and the sound of drums floats across the rippled pool against the glitter of dusky belly dancersAll men are morning people; they wake with huge erections mounting stele like to the sky, the bed climbs with their desire. Men think they want women to be soft, gentle, yielding. He talks to her in body talk, whispers nonsense syllables and she watches his eyes dilate with the pleasure she’s dispensing. She’s not the little girl he claims to love, and doesn’t weave him mysteries, they just arrive like a new wind from the south, like a strong perfume smelt walking along a busy street. She is always three steps ahead and around a corner before he’s even noticed her absence, here the river is a heavy aube of glinted light, she’s cried too much.I’ve been asleep for ever meandering through the meadows of my mind peeling snippets of past conversations gathering questions I thought we’d left behind. So now I understand how it’s all about you, and how you feel fulfilled, full up with love, and it’s all about me and the roads I have or haven’t walked , it’s all about this loop in time turning back to strangle us.