Her husband and daughters asleep, her mind fitful and restless, she peruses the bookshelves of the living room by the light of a single reading lamp on the table beside the chair where she will sit, knowing which volume she seeks, pretending to herself and some unknown witness that her search is more random, that the book she will take down and read is a sudden spur-of-the-moment inspiration - not a fevered all-day forbidden imagining now barely deemed acceptable in the cover of night and the absence of cognizant family.

When her fingers alight on the slim volume she strokes it just once along the length of the spine as if teasing an erection with her fingernail before gently pulling it toward her, then turning and sitting, the rustling of her pajamas the only sound in the quiet house.

Idly she plays with the top button of the pajama shirt as she stares at the cover, reading the words, parsing the abstract imagery, not quite ready yet to enter, plays with the drawstring of her pants, not quite ready to enter there either, teasing herself toward irresistible temptation.

Finally she opens the book with her left hand, slips her right hand inside her pajama shirt, and reads the first poem, her fingertips grazing lightly over her left nipple.

The first few are not so erotic, but the sum of the experience, the connection to the author, the knowing of what is to come, what is, the hope expressed in the possibility that nothing is forbidden to her fuels her memories of other women and other men and her desire to know more.

She reads the first erotic poem twice, pinching her nipple as she reads, harder as she reads the second time, and then the second poem, her hand stealing past the waistband of her pajama pants to her clit and a gasp of pleasure.

Her head full of the words and memories and the promises of the future she lovingly places the book on the table beside the chair and devotes both hands finally to her own pleasure.

The words she utters to herself as she pinches and strokes her nipples and circles her fingers faster and faster harder and harder against her clit, dipping inside herself, picturing the perfect fuck, are structured, repeated, sometimes rhyming, often invented, but the final cry has no words, is raw and primitive, a guttural utterance of sound without structure infused with the infinite and eternal meaning of pure pleasure.