...of sexual awakening

He used to tell me, "You are beautiful." After every period of separation, as though shocked by the fact, he'd say: "You're getting more beautiful. Widowhood suits you." I never thought myself a widow, neither in his absence nor in his presence. I'd smile and think of Garance's response in Les Enfants du paradis: "I'm not beautiful, I'm simply alive. That's all there is to it." I'd say nothing, but he understood the silence of my smile.

He would encircle my wrist with two fingers and say, "This is what comes to mind when I think of you: closed and open. It's something rare." He'd squeeze harder as he explained to me. This is what he called "the nutcracker". I had to look it up right away in the dictionary of sex.

Long after he left me I still shuddered with the feeling of him inside me. I'd wait for the moment when I could slip away from others to be on my own, then close my eyes and fill myself with him all over again. I never told him.

He would say, "You don't talk much," and I would content myself with a smile. I talked to myself. I had become accustomed to talking to myself. Even with him?

[The Proof of the Honey, Al Neimi, S.]