There’s this thing he said the last time he was here. About how pretentious people sound when they use expensive words and how boring it can become.

It was a preface, a condition, a distinction he was building to. How he could listen to me talk forever because my big words didn’t come with an intention to impress or an invitation to approve.

There’s this game I play. Let’s see how long he can sit there before anything physical happens. Because I am from the desert, I can outlast most when it comes to delayed satisfaction. I get to watch the wheels turn, the body relax, and the willpower tested.

But he comes from a desert too, halfway around the world from mine. And it’s taught him to love the game as much as I do. You can’t lust for rain unless you know what it is to be parched for an age. And even then, you want the rain to remain special and a bit of a tease. Anything or anyone who comes too easily doesn’t earn distinction from the vulgar primordial mess that surrounds us.

The words spoken before touch are not banter or foreplay. They are as much a sexual connection as anything that follows. The sex would be nothing without the exchange of thoughts and finishing of one another’s sentences. Parables that require no explanation.

This is not quotidian. It must be kept rare in order to create the right conditions for the lightning strike, the thunder crack and the deluge birthed by pregnant clouds.