What we wanted we discussed, until the sun tied the words together, and my month's phone bill doubled.

I am an animal trying to be an animal; I don't know how. I've bought too far into money, handshakes, bodies, books: the submerged pleasures of Protestants. In the 18th century the European wealthy would wrap a string quartet's eyes in gauze, instructing them to play above the shouts and cries of a bacchanal, powdered-wig fucking. You and I belong to the quartet.

You said, "primal." Which is not a word most would use to sum me. This is why we choose each other? (I will push you down and you will see sweat bead off my lips, my eyes like lamps. I will heave you against the wall and cup your head in my large hands, and our mouths will meet like applause.)

? ? ?

I never liked to be a man, to suggest where we will drink, what we will eat, to lift a woman from the ground or throw her to a bed; I was ashamed of that shade of violence and greed, and guilty from the wanting. You are worth taking; you are worth pressure. I will push, hot as a coal fire in summer, until we have sweat together into one shaking creature.