image provided by Peter Rol at SXC, 2006.

you are
gorgeous
to me
you are

i could
gorge
myself
i could

swallow you
whole
swallow you
wholely

and not
a whit
and not
a bit

i'd waste
no morsel
no freckle
no drip

i'd taste
nor suck
nor sip
nor grip

nor fuck
anyone
else
than you.

image provided by Dave Sackville, at SXC, 2006.

What would you do if you found out that the man upstairs was in love with you for no other reason than what he'd heard about you?

You'd think, mad bugger, wouldn't you? I mean, how could someone be in love like that? Based just on what they'd heard? It don't feel right, does it?

When Mrs Dyer, the daft old bat from 72, told me putting her hand on my arm as she did, her dull black, tremulous eyes looking at me all concerned, I just laughed and shrugged her off, I mean, I'd never given him a thought before. But, when Sally Bishop said so too, that was not so easy to shrug off. She'd given me this funny look, widening her eyes, like she expected better (though who of wasn't clear). And, even though I'd laughed in just the same way as I'd done with Mrs Dyer, I'd felt none too good, and had to sit down when I'd got back in again.

I mean, it's not like we've ever met. He lives right above me and I'm right under him. And now, when I'm in bed staring up at the ceiling, I can almost feel his weight on me and I have to roll over and draw the covers tight around me, making sure I'm all tucked up. And then I'm wondering what he thinks when he's in bed, and hope he's not thinking about me or whether my bed's right underneath his.

All I know about him is what my neighbours tell me, and all that he knows about me is what his neighbours tell him, and his neighbours are on his floor and and my neighbours are on my floor, and somehow, somewhere between floors where the dust gathers on the stairs there's talk about us. I'm told he's about thirty, serious, keeps himself to himself. No family. Works nights. Christ-knows what they tell him about me...

For goodness sake! I've never met him! From what I'm told he drives a van around Essex, and me? Well, I'm here most of the time, apart from the time I need to go out, get food, beer, my allowance, go to the doc's. So, y'know I'm in and out. But the routine I've got going now means I never bump into him. I'm making sure of that. But I can't quite get rid of of the feeling that he might be watching me when I'm out. But then I think, don't be fookin' stupid, woman, how can he know who to watch for if he's never met you!

All the same, I listen out for him: he leaves just after six each evening, and I'm always back by then. I hear him lock his door, and then it goes quiet as he walks along the landing and I can hear him coming down the stairs. He's never in a hurry, always has this steady, measured step, step, step, step down the stairs; then past my door and down the next flight of stairs, his footsteps getting quieter and quieter until I can't hear him no more. For the last couple of weeks though, he's paused as he gets to my door. I have to put my ear to my front door and really listen, and, I can't be sure if it's right outside my door he stops, but he definitely waits somewhere out there. And it's only after, when I can't hear his footsteps anymore, that I realise I've been holding my breath. Daft, I know. Then I laugh....

Then, last week, I heard that he was off work and I hardly went out that week at all. Christ, what a week that was. The milk went bad in the fridge and I ran outta bread, and I had to put up with the smell of the kitchen bin sweating its contents. It was so bad it made me heave. And I'd hear him coming down the stairs mid-morning, mid-afternoon, times when he'd have normally been in bed and I'd be off out. And then him waiting on the landing outside my door. Once he came down late-on, it must've been late cos' I was about ready to go to bed and I heard him come down the stairs, then wait and wait, and then go back upstairs again, closing his door, and I wanted to stomp up those stairs and bang on his door and ask what the hell he was up to...but my mouth was dry, and it felt just like it does when I'm dreaming that I'm shouting but just this thin, suffocated, strained voice comes out instead.

And how can I ask what he's up to stopping outside my door and that? - he'd know then that I'd been listening on him, and I don't want him to know that. And I don't want to have to look at him. To have to look him in the eye and have him look right back at me, and see me. I don't want that at all.

on this warm, summer's night, he sleeps. look at him: a man completely surrendered to and subdued by sleep.

a breath of wind tumbles in through an open window and blows across his chest, running gently along his shoulder and sweeping up his cheekbone, then brushing in the faintest caress across his forehead.

he stirs briefly, arching his neck.

the wind kisses across his brow and spills around the edge of his face, pooling coolly in his warm ear. it whispers:

my man...

i carry with me the scent of bruised, bitten apricots, roasted cardamom and nutmeg kicked up in the dust by the jeweled feet of a hundred dancing children...

i carry with me dawn smoke in which is wrapped the murmuring of an old man, senseless with the memory of the apricot down of his young wife's skin;

i carry with me the furtive cries of two lovers, in whose tangled limbs i found scant shelter and where i rested, cooling, until their sweat had dried and their kicking feet sent me tumbling in a storm out of bed...

then the wind breathed harder, a dry, brittle rasp in his ear:

my man....

i could lift this cotton sheet from your sleeping body and let it fall as your last breath in a cold shroud upon you.

i could take you, and you would not know.

and the man, dreaming, was looking at himself walking naked through a deserted market, the sun hot, prickling his back; and a warm breeze wrapping and curling around him and pulling him gently, gently, gently away.

you would not know, said the wind, you would not know....

for suzee