I. L’Approche

This bed resents a vacancy; it prefers
the hint of traffic, rumor in the frame.
I watched your patience test what it confers
when hesitation hardens into aim.
Don’t call it thought; thought files its notes away.
This is the body angled toward a cue,
weighing which remark must be delayed,
which silence makes the wider avenue.
Something always yields. We smile and place the bet.
I’ve seen the evening turn on lesser things—
a glance misread, a practiced half-regret,
a laugh that opens more than it can claim.
Lie still. Anticipation does the rest.
We’ve learned how interest rises in a guest.

II. L’Art de Différer

You grip the post the way one grips a line—
to steady it, to see how far it bends.
Like Catherine, who knew the grand design
was letting appetite instruct her friends,
you learn how power sharpens when it waits,
how favor ripens better when deferred.
She governed bodies as she governed states:
by use, exchange—by never saying “third.”
No sentiment, no vacancy, no pause
that couldn’t be revised or filled at need.
You’ve studied this: how hunger without laws
behaves impeccably when left to lead.
Outside, the drums remember older crimes.
Inside the room, the bedpost knocks in time.

III. La Coupure

They enter when the room has lost its edge
and cleverness begins to pass for need.
The wine remembers every careful pledge,
which throats to cut with courtesy.
Desire is labor, unrehearsed as play.
The skill is knowing when to bare the blade,
to let a sentence nick the tender way
and call the blood a compliment well-made.
The prophet fails who thinks this ends in light.
The source was never neutral, never fair.
What came before us presses into night—
We drink. The sentence holds; the bedsheets turn
as melted candles gutter, flare, and burn.