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L E E R O S S I Philip Sleeping I depict his back because my husband’s face with its abstract, New England simplicity of shadow and line would distract from the torso’s weathered creams and blues, its muscled marble. Notice, I’ve confined him to the leftmost third of the canvas, while the rest, a seascape of pillows and sheets tossed by a passing squall, declares that someone has just left, maybe I, but more likely, one of the women or men whose need for his beauty is more physical than mine. Whoever it is, I want you to feel him—solid, opaque, unmoved. You will say, perhaps, the work seems cool and think to yourself, cruel, a bit callous, a child worrying some belovéd pet. But who will remember what he was when all the world desired him? How vivid the bedclothes, how restless, breaking in waves against his dreaming form. 298 ❚ The 2000s ...

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