All of Max's sheets were stained. Stained, signed, and dated. The very first time I had occasion to say, "I've got my period," and Max dipped his finger inside me. With my blood, Max drew a heart on the sheet. The perimeters of love. Paleolithic art. Like the cave paintings at Lascaux. As primal as the beat of a drum, and by the time we were done for the night, there was blood everywhere. As if he'd made a meal of me and used the sheet for a napkin, and blood was on Max's hands and wrists and mouth and groin and thighs and chin and between his toes.
In the morning, Max stripped the sheet from the bed, but instead of putting it in the hamper along with his dirty clothes and towels, he spread it flat on the dining room table. As if it were a linen cloth and he were going to put out plates and silverware. Between the heart and a blot that could've been a piece of a Rorschach test, Max wrote with a felt-tip pen our names -- Max and Lila -- and the date.
O romance! O chivalry! O lift me off my feet and out of my head. Take my wrists and shackle me. Take my heart. My lungs. My liver. O love. Sweet and wondrous love. The stuff of bucolics, aubades, and canzones. Kisses like couplets, and pleasures of the idyll.
-- Binnie Kirshenbaum, Pure Poetry
