The resolution had been devised during a month of living in a skin both scarred and itchy. Inflamed by the unexpected and unscheduled (oh, this poisonous world), I had thought, No. Married only to myself. I smiled. Til 2005. It was monolithic. An austere monument to aloneness.

Last week, the Heron chipped at the single tower till it broke. He used a simple tool: his voice in the hollow of my neck, hand warm on cream-silk and hip, what he named your widowmaker. And the stories he told? Crucial. The walls were thin; inside: darkness and hollow, the smell of the unexpected.

When it happened, a song clicked alive; it was Bjork in a forest pitched dark, reminding me of the tiniest spark:

In a heart full of dust
Lives a creature called lust
It surprises and scares
Like me
Like me

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