“Where’s my a thousand kisses?” he said
“Like you gave the Spanish poet?”
Urgently recalling the story I must have told carelessly over a pillow, I said
“Maybe I was simply showing him how to count in English?”
“1,2,3 etcetera”
“Rather than showing the depth of my affection”
“Where’s my a thousand kisses?” he said “that you gave the Spanish poet in the manor park?”
I said “darling KNOW that you are loved but I’m 999 kisses short of loving with that ferocity and grandness ever again”
“Sometimes a human being can be done with crazy love”
“Where’s my thousand kisses that you gave the Spanish poet in the manor park, beside the duck pond?
“It’s not a numbers game sweetness I must protest”
“Maybe I was just feeling guilty about not loving him the way he wanted me to”
“So I kissed him over and over like a hammer”
“Where is my a thousand kisses you gave the Spanish poet in the manor park, beside the duck pond, under the shade of a cedar tree?”
“Darling stop”
“Fancy passion is a folly so silly and eventually decrepit, merely a mention as a car whizzes by on route to the the big house”
“One kiss, curious and meant, is worth a thousand in the manor park, beside the duck pond, under the shade of a cedar tree”
“Why not wait for the one kiss that is meant?”
“Where is my a thousand kisses you gave the Spanish poet in the manor park beside the duck pond, under the shade of a cedar tree, one glorious summers day?”
“He was Spanish dear, love is a dance”
“And you gentle man are English”
“A thousand kisses in the manor park, beside the duck pond, under the shade of a cedar tree, one glorious summers day…would be akin to murder!”
“Now lay your bugged head down and sleep and forget the Spanish poet”
“He is probably writing a poem right now about the notorious Australian love bomber”