None of the flowers were hers really, she says.  
Nothing was hers. She is playing with a sprig of parsley,
twisting it between her elongated fingers. Her shape
is a little unclear, she blends in with the shadows. The wisteria
is like feathers is like quills and her fingertips are thick with work, are stained
with ink. I ask her what was hers, and she says him
she says, hunger. I know this one well, the toll of its bell.
Its reverberations. I tell her hunger isn’t a thing
we can possess, it’s a wild animal, a rat, a snake, a swarm
of ants. There’s no difference, Catherine says,
between possession and being possessed. I almost disagree,
and then I think of being held at arm’s length in safe hands,
being observed completely. Of waking up in the night sick
with fear for it all and feeling a heavy arm across me. How knowing
I could leave and not wanting to is the warmest thing.
I think of the opposite, too, of course. And then I tell her
my theory on dead girls and flowers, dead girls
and water, dead girls always weighing 90 – 125 lbs and sometimes
having one tattoo, but I don’t think she’s listening to me,
and I don’t think she’s seen CSI or Law & Order: Special VictimsUnit. No,
she says, I’m being literal. My love for him is reflection. I am amirror,
I am a bright thing only because I allow myself to refract his light.
She hasn’t even seen Waterhouse’s ‘Lady of Shalott’.
I want to show her a picture on my phone, but there are no
phones here. I try to describe it instead: me, nude and drunks
passed out in a bath full of suddy water and petals, my skin all scum-
med over with bubble, all dove white breasts and hard
angled hips and patterns from the shadows of rose petals, all
lined with last year’s sunburn, all floating limbs. All faceless.Turned away.
Catherine is cleaning one of her nails with the parsley. What,
she asks, are you looking for? Absolution? Because that isn’t
mine to give. I wonder if I could be a mirror too if I were wiped clean.