The Museum of Antiquity, Illustrated

I revisit our neighbors, the unwed apothecary and his miserable son who stirred balsam all day, disturbing the thick ethers of jewel-weed in its vase, but at night, brought me carefully jeweled boxes and polished breast-pins. Though I was chaste and unwilling, I accepted his gifts and teased him with my "Touch-me-not." In the portico now between our houses, nothing remains but the skeleton of a small dog. On the Street of Augustals, the baker's oven is charged with 80 loaves of bread (now stone), and on the Via del Balcone, two large horses are recovered whole. In the hall of my father's house, my portrait's perished too - my hair, once delicate in plaits, held by bronzed combs with ivory teeth, gone, under the weight of soot and memory. We are more like statues than statues, alleys littered with the forms of women lying feet to feet with their daughters, their fingers still bearing the rings of marriage. I was too curious in the ways of men, in the soft living hand of the apothecary's son stirring my breast, now cast in plaster. The world is ruined, my father had said, learning of my indiscretions. The future is now impossible, and so unlike us.