I wish I could hear your voice again.

THE NOSE: THE SENSE OF SMELL IN HUMAN BEINGS IS GENERALLY LESS ACUTE THAN IN OTHER ANIMALS.

The smells of my lover’s body are still strong in my nostrils. The yeast smell of her sex. The rich fermenting undertow of rising bread. My lover is a kitchen cooking partridge. I shall visit her gamey low-roofed den and feed from her. Three days without washing and she is well-hung and high. Her skirts reel back from her body, her scent is a hoop about her thighs.

From beyond the front door my nose is twitching, I can smell her coming down the hall towards me. She is a perfumier of sandalwood and hops. I want to uncork her. I want to push my head against the open wall of her loins. She is firm and ripe, a dark compound of sweet cattle straw and Madonna of the Incense. She is frankincense and myrrh, bitter cousin smells of death and faith.

When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.

My lover is cocked and ready to fire. She has the scent of her prey on her. She consumes me when she comes in thin white smoke smelling of saltpetre. Shot against her all I want are the last wreaths of her desire that carry from the base of her to what doctors like to call the olfactory nerves.

TASTE: THERE ARE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL SENSATIONS OF TASTE: SWEET SOUR BITTER AND SALT.

My lover is an olive tree whose roots grow by the sea. Her fruit is pungent and green. It is my joy to get at the stone of her. The little stone of her hard by the tongue. Her thick-fleshed salt-veined swaddle stone.

Who eats an olive without first puncturing the swaddle? The waited moment when the teeth shoot a strong burst of clear juice that has in it the weight of the land, the vicissitudes of the weather, even the first name of the olive keeper.

The sun is in your mouth. The burst of an olive is breaking of a bright sky. The hot days when the rains come. Eat the day where the sand burned the soles of your feet before the thunderstorm brought up your skin in bubbles of rain.

Our private grove is heavy with fruit. I shall worm you to the stone, the rough swaddle stone.

THE EYE: THE EYE IS SITUATED IN THE ORBITAL CAVITY. IT IS ALMOST SPHERICAL IN SHAPE AND ABOUT ONE INCH IN DIAMETER.

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Light is reflected into the eyes by whatever comes within the field of vision. I see colour when a wavelength of light is reflected by an object and all other wavelengths are absorbed. Every colour has a different wavelength; red light has the longest.

Is that why I seem to see it everywhere? I am living in a red bubble made up of Louise’s hair. It’s the sunset time of year but it’s not the dropping disc of light that holds me in the shadows of the yard. It’s the colour I crave, floodings of you running down the edges of the sky on to the brown earth on to the grey stone. On to me.