"Genesis."
"It was late, of course, just the two of us
still at the table working on the second bottle of wine
when you speculated that maybe Eve came first
and Adam began as a rib that leaked out of her side one
paradisal afternoon.
Maybe, I remember saying, because much was possible
back then.
And I mentioned the talking snake and the giraffes
looking up from the Ark, their noses
up in the thin Old Testament air.
'I like a man with a flexible mind,' you said then,
lifting your candlelit glass to me.
And I raised mine to you and began
to wonder what life would be like as one of your ribs.
To be with you all the time, riding under your blouse
and skin, caked under the soft weight of your breasts.
Your favorite rib, I'm assuming, if you ever
bother to stop and count them, which is just what I did later
that night after you fall asleep and we were fitted tightly back
to front, your long legs against the length of mine,
my fingers doing the crazy counting that comes of love."
[APPLAUSE]