And she thinks to herself about
How much his sexual techniques are like the settings on her Black & Decker Blender:
Distinguished only by changes in pitch and intensity.
Yet they each had their own little name:
Grind, Frappe, Obliviate.
So too the bestiary of contortions in the copy of the Kama Sutra
She saw strategically placed on the nightstand,
Pages earmarked like a threat.
She feels her heat steal away from her body,
Condensing on the roof of his laboring chest.
“I’m in an oven,” she thinks. “An oven that feeds only twice a week.
I’m the loaf of bread.”
He had mixed her up, kneaded her, pounded her for good measure
And then packed her in a box.
She sees the coastline of Antarctica in the cracks of his bedroom ceiling.
She imagines Lilith’s outraged scream falling across the oceans of ancient earth,
Encasing it in a womb of ice that lingers at the poles even today.
Tomorrow she plans to call some travel agents and sift them.
The one who gets her the best rate on a one way to Antarctica
Will become her new shaman,
Her Pathfinder across a log jam of spinning chakras.
He rolls her onto her side so he can try out page 34.
The crease in the pillow is a mountainside in Antarctica.
A mountain of clothing, she decides,
Remembering the range of laundry waiting by the washer at home.
One pile for the business girl, one pile for the Sunday girl,
One pile for the party girl, one pile for the artist girl…
In Antarctica, she wouldn’t need as many clothes,
Just enough to keep her self warm.
In Antarctica she would rebuild the temple of herself
Seal it with a gate that opened only for her
With a sign out front to warn visitors: “No thank you. I already have everything.”
Far away, she hears a blender work its way up the scale
Until the pressure blows off the lid.
“When I go to Antarctica,” she thinks,
“I’ll need to bring an ice pick.”