You are a tall woman. Knotted in a bun, your hair gives you a golden crown according to Hesiod. You speak to me nobly.

Your leaning voice. The curve of both of our words. Inclined towards one another. Your eyes were closed, like when you kiss or seek my face with your fingers. Close to you, I thought I finally understood why the poet is said to be "blind".

Your sentences: moving hands. A body with a closed gaze. Like a blind man stretching his arms out towards his night, you lead with your words. With your gestures and your mouth, you savor and you think out loud. Your words are a skin. You enjoy being a woman.

Curving and gliding you advance, inventing words when you feel they lack, pressed or pressing them like one skin against another skin, desiring the embrace and the thrust, not accepting they are nothing more than a puff of air and shaken black signs.

Translated from the French by Dawn Cornelio