“Remember this when you doubt how much I love you,” my husband says.  

We are naked. Scott is standing at the foot of our queen-size bed, his cock at rest against his left thigh, me lying on the duvet, legs splayed, both hands clasping the slats of the headboard.  He holds his mother’s sterling silver tea tray, the one she used for Garden Club, now repurposed for a puja brimming with red rose petals and one full, radiantly open bloom. Scott sets the tray of offerings: a candle in a glass votive, a red clay bowl we bought in Varanasi, his mom’s sterling silver creamer filled with honey, between my open legs. 

He kneels on the bed, pours warm honey on my yoni, places the rose head between my labia and chants “Sri Guru Namah.” 

He has polished the tarnished tray with lamb’s wool and pulled the petals from the fresh, long-stemmed beauties that he hid in his car. Waking at 4 a.m., he mixed the paste of sacred ash, adding holy water a drop at a time.  

I’m not sure how I feel; embarrassed, honored, shy? What kind of person doesn’t know how to receive a gift, especially one so resplendently showered? I should be all in. 

I’ve been miffed too long—become someone I never wanted to be—a lonely married woman—The Wife. 

My soul sista Naomi, a high-priced call girl who specializes in “The Girl Friend Experience,” says her clients would be thrilled if their wives offered as much sex as I do, and at the frequency, duration, and extent of what I do for my husband. 

“Don’t feel guilty,” my sex-goddess friend says,” You guys screw way more than the national average.”  

Oh well.  I obey and let my lover—who’s seen me naked when I was fat, thin, bloated, buff, saggy, cranky, peri and post-menopausal—touch me in all those places he adores.  He anoints my nipples and naval with paste and lingers on each daub.   

“Remember this when you doubt how much I love you,” Scott says. 

Imagine a rose, any color will do—pink, peach, yellow, white tipped with the lightest tint of green, an afterthought, an oh by the way gift from nature. Now imagine couplets of velvety petals falling on you, the dizzying scent of rose oil on your skin. Look beyond the colors, see the hand that touches each petal with reverence and wonder.  The petals land on moles, pale and darker ones, slightly tan, molted, uneven, congenital, common, and stretch marks—white and silver tributaries on the belly. Waist and flanks perfumed. May it continue. Scott reaches down, lays his fingers on my cheek, and says, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known.” 

I don’t say no.  I am there, he is too, then more, much more, inside me. I grip, pull him in, hold tight to the headboard, honey everywhere.

Today I hear his voice. Here, years later, I petal roses, cover my broken heart with holy paste, imagine Scott’s offerings to help me live.