Blowing Hot and Cold
Jeanne Holtzman

The night thrashes. Whooshes. Dead leaves claw at your window. Branches snap.
But why do you quake? Surely the walls of your house have withstood greater forces. You are warm beneath your blankets and await no one's safe return. You're quite used to being alone. There once were men, of course. Many men. But you grew tired of them or they of you, until you tired of the whole ordeal. And now they are old and grey and bald and fat, and you are unencumbered. Not stuck watching them fail or listening to their tedious complaints. No snores and smells and pathetic attempts at sex. No bedside vigils.
But the wind, the wind. It blasts the dead from their graves. It sighs and groans like a young lover. Like Levi. Levi who never got the chance to grow old. Levi with the soul of a child and the passion of a man. He comes to you on nights like this, when sleep and waking dance and wrestle. Your sweet young camel driver, your Arabian Prince, he blows in on a sirocco and rides you through the sultry cinnamon night, his softness drawing milk from your breasts, his hardness releasing your shudders. And you crush him in your arms and howl like the wind, I love you. I love you. I love you. As if you haven't already betrayed him. As if, in the ruthless sunlight, you didn't see his pleading eyes and turn away.

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