She is dozing naked upstairs now and the morning light is falling here on my hands. There is no sound but the slip of my breath and in this silence, my skin ravished by the memory of her touch, I take up my pen and I begin to write.
In addition to his thirteen novels, Robert Olen Butler has published six short story collections, one of which, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Grove Press) won the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.
