^{My Stutter Speaks, Pt. 6}

So much order you’ve imposed: perfectly-folded middle-school textbook covers, travel ensembles planned and packed by day, scheduled playtime for your children. You try so hard to counter my dependable, haphazard presence in our partnership. Even your first sex was by appointment—your mother’s weekly Wednesday commute to Jersey opened the afternoon to the slow climb of foreplay, a late April day’s long light, Al B. Sure, and candles as ambiance. I knew I meant too much to you to leave with your virginity, but in the days before, reading Jackie Collins on the subway to and from school, anticipation growing like a gorged, cocooned caterpillar, you thought orgasm while engaged in the act might sublimate me with your first petite mort, might flip the script, fill my silences with your words, thoughts spilling winged like a butterfly. But alongside your genetic need for just-so, I grew in you, with you, for you, knew before you tried to break the silence with (fluent?) pillow talk that I would be your most loyal lover.