• Honey

    We begin by slowly, slowly undressing you. One button, one snap, one lace at a time. With each button, a gentle touch of my lips on your neck, on your ear, on your lips. You stand, breathing slowly, appreciating the pace, trying to slow yourself down. You’re bare-shouldered now, and you feel my lips and…

  • Tattoo

    The tattoo, he hadn’t noticed before: it had been cooler, then.  Today was finally warm enough to forego a sweater, and her shirt — white, with a button-down collar, from the boys’ department — was open enough that he could glimpse the ink along her collarbone.  Some of it, anyway. “What is that?” he wanted…

  • Bookcase

    We are in the boutique hotel lobby where we first met for drinks: same sitting area, same booth, which I’m beginning to think of as Ours. We watch the people at the other tables: the business meetings, all laptops and PowerPoint; the vacationers from Spain, writing postcards; the lesbian couple near the window, trying not…

  • Cheek

    [click here for audio version] “Turn the other one,” he said. His tone was calm, even, unhurried; but to her it was a command: that was all she could hear. His casual demeanor was a façade. She thought, momentarily, about noncompliance; but she knew it was no use. It was the voice, not the words,…

  • Ring

    [click here for audio version] They headed out of the city, exiting the ring road where the highway started west, driving into the night with the metropolitan luminescence behind them. Ninety minutes later, up in the hills — there were no mountains here — they pulled over to properly regard the night sky. They left…

  • Tile

    Memories of his past friends and loves flooded him, an enormous tessellation of people and events, sights and sounds and sensations. Ronnie thought about the rich mosaic he had lived; and about how for some of those people, he was the common connection; and how for others, he was but a way-station on the path…

  • Scar

    The first time he touched her there she flinched, withdrawing, eager to hide: not from his hand, which she welcomed, but from the flood of memories which seemed resident in that particular spot. Every time she touched it herself, she winced in ambivalence. Now he was here, running his finger along its length; then two…

  • The Hat

    In the New York of decades past, millineries and men’s hatters were if not ubiquitous certainly plentiful enough, serving every corner of the city. But men stopped wearing hats, for the most part, in the 1960s, and the hatters began fading from view. A few, like the venerable J&J Hatter in midtown, hung on; but…

  • Orchid

    The flower opens to my touch. I spread wide the soft, pliable petals. Their fragrance blooms in the air, an earthy cloud that envelopes my senses. I touch each glistening petal in turn, slick and dewy, becoming dewier with even the lightest contact. I transfer the nectar to my tongue and enjoy the different notes,…

  • Coin

    Richard woke in the pre-dawn hours and looked at the woman next to him. The heat was on, and like so many apartment dwellers they could not regulate it properly; not for lack of trying, nor for want of repeated calls to the super. But the heat, like central heating in so many houses and…