Annotations for Performance: Tempo

When we swam once / I touched you in water / and our bodies remained free / you could hold me and be blind of smell / You climbed the bank and said. [Tempo speeds up at the end up of this stanza and immediately breaks into the next lines without a gap.]

This is how you touch other women / the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter / And you searched your arms / for the missing perfume

Stanza Six / The speaker's lover compares his odorless touch of previous lovers with disdain, suggesting she does not want to be odorless of the cinnamon scent, embracing identity. Aside from a pause between "wife" and "the lime burner's daughter" this stanza is read in a faster tempo.