1:56 a.m.

While you sleep, I watch your skin amplify the March moonlight, my lesbian lover. Lesbian lover � I always hated that phrase. It sounds like tabloid TV talk-show trash talk. Partner is no better; it sounds like we got together to run a business, perhaps a lesbian tour company. Wife? A wife needs have a husband, and what is husbandry but the raising of stock? This slumbering nymph could never be chattel, though farming has its merits. Many a time have I planted kisses in the worry furrows of your brow. I have plowed you with fingers, tongue, fists, reaping a crop of passion in your moist, red earth.

The first time we came together, both puppy-eager and kitten-quick, limbs and hair and skin in a sprawl of lust, biting and clawing and scratching each other�s soul bare. We slept in that same tumbled jumble, arms and legs juxtaposed like so many pick-up-sticks. The morning sunlight woke us, although it was past noon, for any time one wakes after a night like that it must be morning: the first morning, the beginning, the dawn. Each morning since has been the first morning, for each day dawns with a new love, love reborn. How can I call you anything but my lover, for love is what binds us, what draws us together again and again? Love is the only thing powerful enough to describe this.

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