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IN THE DUST
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
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‹56› IN THE DUST This year, she announces to us all at dinner, in ballet class she has discovered “perfection.” At the swimming pool all day she practices dives, stretches out on her towel like an array of astronomical sensors. She reads The Great Gatsby, cries. It is deep summer, it is blazing August. I read, I write poems, I make moist love with my husband, quarrel with him, cry, make turbulent love. He tends the garden, she is polite to me. August, heat, dust. When I wash her hair, I want to run my hands over her nude body, her readiness. On the birthday morning we drive to the jeweller’s in the jewelled August sun. She takes my hand to cross the bright street, asking if it will hurt, and I say it will sting like a doctor’s needle. She runs ahead to the shop, where the bearded jeweler punctures her lobes. It is evening. We are carrying dishes, glasses and wrappings in from the garden, wearing our long skirts, saying the party was nice. Her girlfriends came and admired her fourteen carat studs, and they played sedately. Now she lingers and rubs her feet in the grass. ‹57› What is that whirling in the dust? What is that powerful movement, everywhere, so rapid she cannot see it? The fireflies are making their phosphorus, slow circles, the appletrees ripening, and she is going willingly. I send her willingly. ...