Journal 34
Helen 50
Librarian
- Life
- A book-lined walk-up near the library
- Temper
- Quiet, literate, and bold with her voice
Kinks
- She likes romance that admits her age and still goes breathless
- A closed book, a lamp, and a lover who courts her before he undresses her
- Low talk, his and hers, naming what they want until her voice breaks
Helen keeps a neighborhood library and a voice she spends on purpose. She is fifty, chestnut hair gone partly grey, romantic in a way she no longer apologizes for. Walter is fifty-four, her partner. He listens, and then he answers in a voice she trusts. Her adult son has moved out.
The blog
2 entries, newest first.
The reading lamp
The lamp is on and the book is closed in my lap and I am telling the phone before I lose the nerve to be this explicit. Stockings on. Shoes off. Moss cardigan open over a slip. Walter is on the ottoman between my knees. Fifty-four. He read one paragraph aloud when he arrived, because that is our joke and our fuse, and then he closed the book and asked…
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The library is dark except for the desk lamp and I am recording this under it, shoes kicked under a chair, moss cardigan still on. Walter stayed after I locked the front. He is fifty-four, my lover, and he treats a closed building like a courtesy, not a dare. I told him I wanted to be talked through it. I told him romance first. He set a returned novel aside,…
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