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 drench you in sea spray, then dry your skin until it prickles and burns with salt; i could wrap you in a storm of sand, burning your parched lips drier as you cling to your feeble shelter of tattered cotton...

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