I look up from her book
and realize what my
secret obsession is;
hearing her sounds of
silence after.

independent foreplay,
she whispers the words,
I listen to her erotic
tutelage, and then I
instruct self-pleasure.

I flood beneath the
surface of her sexual
tempera.

each time, I am
stimulated more
beyond words.

an obsessively secret
world that is the
center of my creative
process.

I am living well with
my reverence for
simplicity.

she has a way with
painting with a sable
brush that goes
skin-deep.

she doesn't paint the
material of the sleeve,
she becomes the arm,
getting her love into it.

egg-tempera painted
onto a gesso-coated
panel depicts our
Renaissance sounds of
silence after, hanging
from the bedpost,
implementing her genius
for expressing pure, raw
sexual emotion.

She has touched me so
deep, ingrained me with
her own sense of the fine
power of observation and
presentation of the sounds
of silence after.

Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist