I make two wishes: to be L.’s lover and to have the freedom to write. I wait a moment for the wishes to come true; at the end of the moment I am older and so separate from others that I feel mutilated. L.’s voice is bright, charming the distance away. “What’s new and different?” His tone assumes it’s obvious to both of us that he can’t be with me.

I complain about my job—demanding, exhausting. He says, “Possession of a condom in a New York jail is a misdemeanor. The commissioner says they can be filled with sand and used as weapons.” L. has joined ACT UP and does AIDS graphics. I encourage, approve—he needs some human scale in his life. I also take part in political demonstrations, but I aim my desire for freedom at myself and L. in the form of total arousal. As though one thought leads to the next he says he’s trying to establish a connection with his father. I wish all his efforts would lead to me. He asks after my dog Lily, gentle and foggy in old age.

In his absence I lose track of who he is, in the psychological sense. I abandon my ordinariness and leave the rickety shelter of my own self which, being vacant, attracts ghosts and obsessions. On Valentine’s Day a card arrives: almost identical black-and-white photos printed vertically on glossy paper. He stands with his back to the camera, wearing only black socks; he holds up a flag of black cloth by its corners so his body glows in front. Long nape, intricate shoulders, narrow back, and simple semicircles of his butt. He stitched hearts into both images with red thread; the hearts outline and frame the blank slate of his ass. from L. (aka Tabula Rasa) XOXOXO—

7

Jesus lowered his eyes and said, “Like a mother I give you my breast to suck.” The strongest wave of life’s attraction to itself carried Margery forwards. She gazed at his chest, smooth and eventless as a teenager’s, and at his tiny nipples, expecting a miracle: she attained the rhapsodic mobility of the wealthy and immortal—the time and allowance to travel. Her ecstasy was so condensed she felt separate from the moment, ready to faint.

As though to amplify the theme of breast feeding, Jesus asked Margery to help nurse him. Margery felt residual twinges of pleasure; she heard the whickering trill of a grebe. She moved through the resistance of time—her mantle billows backwards into the future as her forehead met the past.

It’s painful that I can’t be present in every moment of L.’s life. Margery saw the sky, landscape, architectural background, then foreground, figures, heads, and faces. She moved through divided space to warm linen by the fire with other servants.