She stops stirring the pasta—the mother of my sweet girlfriend—and bends lumbarly to load the washing machine with her dirty clothes… Her jeans tighten, full with the cellulitic flesh of her thighs and lovely bottom. The delicate pressure of her panties rimple against the bulging blue, soaking up her scented imprint. She squats now, and her slipping jeans show the lunula of her lower back, a hint of pale buttock, the slim shadow of a crack. She throws in a handful of her old fig leaves—Monday (conjugal, clean), Tuesday (filial, soiled haste), Wednesday (us alone, powdery front bloom). I look on sadly. When the house is empty I steal near to her bed and pluck like flowers as many of them as I can from her dirty linen basket. I examine them all carefully one by one for the best of the bunch. Most have stains, at least half are soiled, dry and friable (IBS, a fostress’ haste). Just in the middle-front where her femality rubs the best have the clear-green streak of mature effluvium I’ve yet to find a name for. It has a gentle pungent aroma, exotic, a mildly musky labium smell like that of her daughter. This secret nectar, rich and rare as oud, I hunt for like ambergris. There’s sometimes a slight tinge of rancidity which I prefer the purest lack.