Reading Anaïs Nin

The alphabet disappoints,
even with shapely curvatures,
sharp angles and mismatched
hieroglyphs. Letters wear masks,
syllables morph and though
a sentence, with the generosity
of a fishing line, trails to the end
of a page then on and on, words
are no match for a torso bending
into another or a lick into the damp
velvet of sex. But the story
is what we have to ease us
into a lighted room. A painter
sketches his naked wife as she sleeps,
arranging her nightgown
so he can see her soft hair
and pink oak leaf lips
in the light she shies away from
when they make love.
In his studio he lays the sketches
around him on the floor until
he rises. When his wife enters,
he is bare, writhing
among his painted creations,
and in her envy she presses
onto him, hoping to surpass the art
he has set before her. But
in this brevity, they collapse
under the frailty of typed letters
on the page; if only we could
trace the rounded O or snuggle
into the caves of S, slip into
V and feel its depth, real and exact.