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29 wHite cAmelliA In January my grandfather’s blood collects on the floor of Kroll BrosTire Shop and flies away as a cardinal. I polish my grandmother’s silver, hundreds of miles from their graves. Outside, snow drifts and dunes in the midday dark under the hollies, cochlear—a camellia curled in the birdbath’s mouthful of ice. Petals like the shallow sink of platters, the upturned lip of a ewer in the center, a gravy boat, a tureen glowing white as cream. I polish till I see a face in the silver—my grandmother’s cheekbones curving along the sugar bowl like petals, a quick flutter of forties-red lipstick in a soft brush of light. The polish-slicked filigree of the tea service repeats the flower’s veins, the ribbed leaves, evergreen holly darts sharp as syringes, hard as a bullet in the fissured ice where a cardinal beats his wings crazily in the snowbath—the hidden center of the flower, a blush of blood left in the napkin after dinner’s cleared. ...

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