The Cinnamon Peeler : Michael Ondaatje

I am trying very hard not to fall in love but ..it's hard.. "Nuf about me..Why don't you just read this?

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other womenthe grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knewwhat good is itto be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

I am not a Clydesdale but...

Apparently when you live in -30s, you adapt. Also people remind you daily that being bfff with the double-duvet is not a great socializing option and they mind if you are not paying attention. So you grumble, put on about twelve layers of clothing and go check out the winter festivals.. as if you didn't have enough of the snow already. After about three such expeditions, the festivals become more or less a continuous walk-on-the snow, try-to-warm-yourself-by-chopping-some-wood, failure-acknowledgement, hot-chocolate-and-hand-warmer-in-pocket process. I have a feeling that unless you are a Shiba Inu or a little Clydesdale, you are naturally at a comparative disadvantage as far as frolicking in the snow is concerned. However, I am not any variety of dog or pony. So my feelings are not that hard to decipher. Yet, today I went out of the house with absolutely no provocation and stayed out for an hour shooting my feathered neighbors in the Mill Creek.

Since then I am in bed with no amount of hot chocolates making any difference. Somebody kill me now.