Before you, I had only ever charmed the body
I would later learn to call my own. The slide
of staircase banister, the bounce of horseback ride:

I discovered early, like most girls, how to meet my own need.
So when you came to me, Rosemarie, with your mouth

of summer strawberries, I did not wonder how to
undress you, where to touch, how to shell you open
and eat both husk and seed, the slow work of coaxing out your sound.

The man was watching, and Grace knew why. Nevertheless, she put down her trowel and pulled off her gloves before she shoved the straw hat on her head and traipsed inside.

Her husband, William, turned away from the window.

"Doesn't do much good in here," he said. They were standing in the kitchen, where chalk-white walls looked lemon yellow in the last, strong light of afternoon.

Grace tugged at the hat's narrow brim, then lifted it off her head and returned it to the hook behind the door. "Hats constrict me," she said, jabbing at her flattened curls.

"With your fair skin, you've got to be more careful." William lifted two glasses from the cabinet.

She took his place beside the window. "Why careful? I've lived sixty summers in the sun-whatever fair was there is gone." She touched her forehead to the pane's warm glass.

"It's our ozone that's gone," he reminded her, pulling ice from the freezer. "This sun is different from the one when we were young."

When the phone rang, Grace tried not to smile at the welcomed interruption. She moved quickly, answering before the second ring.