Her first letter

i'm chewing through my nails,
the thick sharp taste of dirt
on my tongue, when i read
your letter the second time.

in the years to come, you might
never learn of this, my first
act of love, my needs

breeding into greed; you will
never know how i touched
what you touched, how i ran

around every bend your
evasive sentences took till
i lost myself between

paragraphs, how i pursued
your blue words till they
surrendered all

their meanings, how my eyes
paused for breath at the end
of the page only to climb up

and start reading a third time.

He looks at at the labels on the drawers.

"NEEDED REGULARLY"

The words cleanly snipped out from a print-out.

"NEEDED BUT NOT REGULARLY"

Tacked onto the laminated wood with a stretch of cellophane tape.

"WANTED BUT NOT NEEDED"

He wonders which one he falls into.