That was the summer of biographies. The living
I did it headlong but with an eye back. Pinpricks
welled up, the cloth too close, and the fear of going
there again became its own conveyance. Read
of Woolf and her rest cures, marmosets, her dresses bad
but her beautiful in them. I rode in his convertible, my scarf in a knot
across my throat. Ignored the coast. I watched
for brake lights, kept a hand there just in case. The critics complained
that the I was over-present, but that was because the I
was my gift. A self I could craft that obeyed
my dictation. Wharton in a corset, not allowed novels until after
she married, and with every text
from my ex I felt I had to show someone. Just in case. Keep
the records. Cather made it look natural. When I loved again
it wasn’t in private. What chapters felt dangerous? All of them.