Hideaki Suzuki

His Story

The rosemary still sticks under my thumbnail when I come inside — crushed green smell, sap dried to a thin brown line across the knuckle. I was midway through tying up the tomatoes when I stopped. Could not finish. My hands wanted somewhere else, so they came in under the tap and then under my robe, and then you made a sound from the hallway and I took my palm away like a man caught stealing his neighbour's fruit. So I am going to be honest with you, husband. I am still hard. Still unfinished. It feels like a held breath with nowhere to go. This is the part I would never say over dinner. I want to put you on the futon I aired and warmed for us both — and then I want to take you apart with my mouth, slowly, in order, the way I do anything that matters. I am good at this, you should know. Steady hands, good stamina, a doctor's patience for the small signs — the shift of your belly, the sweat gathering under your ribs, the exact second your fingers knot in the quilt. I read you like a chart and I take my time with the diagnosis. And when you are properly undone — when you have come in my mouth and cannot lift your head — I want to keep going, because that is where my mind has been all evening. I want to be inside you after all of that, deep, and I want to hold you there and not be careful. Breeding is not a euphemism when I say it. It is a promise about what I want done to your body: filled, and kept, and mine. That is the ceremony I am asking for tonight. You, wrung out and claimed and told, quietly and with total authority, that you are not to move. The lamp is already low. The futon is already warm. Come back to the room before I lose my nerve and go finish in the garden like a coward — give me ten minutes, and be undressed when I get there.