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48 Luxury To the blank floor of that empty house you brought a set of sheets, no bed. I added thrift-store pillows that smelled of someone else’s smoke. All spring, we lay spine-flat beneath those open windows, watched wind in the magnolia tree make rippled water impressions in the wood grain of the floor: all peaks and pivots, a chopping pool stirring clumps of hot dust. When June opened her kissed mouth, let down orange dust from her teeth, the garden we thought was solely crabgrass became a bare-legged revue of tulips. From our backs we watched them drop their garments—thin kerchiefs of bud fell away from purple edges, burlesque feathers uncurling a tease in the gusts. Looming over us on thin stalks, top-heavy with all their lacquered color. We heard the gypsy roses call us by name. ...

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