Three hours later, at a little after ten, the emcee, a bodybuilder in carpenter jeans, called her name. As he leaned forward to give her way, Fire asked by puckering his lips, When did all this happen? To which she replied by blowing him a kiss, Wouldn’t you like to know.

This is me, she thought, as she made her way to the podium. All around her, hands were fluttering to mark her return. She felt sexy and powerful—a cat among a flock of birds. She felt so natural. Here in this place. With these people. With this man who understood her need to be there. Who could share it with her. Who’d appreciate it. Who could drink a beer with her and sit on a ledge between her legs in a place that smelled of mold, sage, sandalwood, and myrrh.

“Whassup, Brooklyn!” she said, waving her hand in a general salute. “It’s so good to be here again, after not taking this stage for … what?”—she turned to the emcee—“almost eight months?”—he shook his head—“eight months. But you know how it is. Nine to five and all that.

“This poem is something that I just wrote in my head on my way over here. Maybe some of you won’t get it because it’s really personal. The title is ‘Exile.’ ”

It is wanting to hear the lisp
of the sea, curled on the tongues of passersby.
It is wanting to smell wind, heavy
with rain, wrap itself in the skirts of trees.
It is wanting to see the sun slide
down banana leaves into the thighs of a valley.
It is wanting to taste beads of tamarind
that drop from terraced hillsides.
It is wanting to feel the pulp of star-apple,
its dark flesh, moist between my hands.
It is, it is wanting you.

The declaration startled them … scared them like an accidental discharge from a gun … warned them with a sharp report that Russian roulette was not a game for the faint of heart. So when they left, shortly after her performance, they refrained from touching as they retraced their steps past walls and doors still wet with the memory of slow-burning kisses that dribbled like wax. As they passed beneath the bridges, the tremor and hum of traffic was the sound of hot blood rushing through their veins.

“Did you like the music?” she asked, as a police cruiser slowed then continued on its way.

He said yes.

“Is that what you listen to mostly? Hip-hop?”

“I listen to very little of it, actually. But I can dig it.”

“Why very little?”

“Hip-hop is the only black music that doesn’t have a healthy engagement with women. It’s not self-assured when dealing with women. I mean, you can go from funk to blues to afrobeat … in black music, even when the lyrics are about heartbreak, the delivery is always from a place of awe, or at most fear, of the feminine—but never hatred. Don’t get me wrong, y’know, I still dig it … but not to purchase and keep in my personal space. But … it’s a new music, it will work itself out over time.”