The orange trees of Tunis

Red threads slipped with light reveal a worn and roseate sheen. She strokes the rug as it recalls scalps of lovers and the feeling slides off the surface of her memory. The work of Bokharan needles and skeins of silver bangles wait each day in the market, where women and doors pull curtains over further knowledge. Her desire shimmers now on past's horizon while the boy at her side, she nurses as much as loves. Even Tunis she makes mundane as her home's apartment. She walks in the evening to the green and white sea, but never wishes for a journey's sail to bear her away to oceans.

He is dear, and hard as a child who plays to mirrors. There's nothing about a desert he would want to understand – like love, it bores him. But his hands are beautiful and his heavy lashes, which drug his sleep each afternoon. Before he slides into cushioned dreams he touches her pearls, sipping luminous milk, from the heavy breasts up toward the betraying neck. He slips from counting into the translucent privacy of dream.

She watches the garden where afternoon breathes in the orange trees. They wave a faint taste through her – the bowl on the sill waiting for the summer evening. Maman slicing the brimming fruit. She lays out the triple strand, loving once more the slight imperfections of each bead and the mothersoft warmth against her hand.