I imagine he cooks with cayenne
that he measures in his hands
that the fine grains pepper his lifeline
a sunset brown when he drops it into the pot
proper, I imagine he dries wine glasses
with a soft cloth after dishes are washed
that he leaves the bathroom with towel tied
tight around tattooed hips like an Egyptian
that he tracks footprint puddles to the bedroom
where he finds her in mirrors jeweling her ears
that he dips his finger in lavender oil and strokes
them through her hair, that he writes poems for her
on bar napkins and margins of novels and sand
bars where tides will erase them. I figure him
mystic and barefoot around bonfires and steel drums
singing of blacks who tallied banana harvests and dragged
home to thatched roofs, in rain and just a cotton shirt
that becomes his skin.