Plaster of Paris

The chocolate melting in the sun. I untie the bow, take the clear wrapper off,smudging the dark on my fingers. I remember asking her the name of the elephant,before she died. She was the last one who would know. Years later, clearing outthe house, I found the plaster cast of her hand that I'd made in art class. I dusted itoff and thirty years later began to paint it as it was—the pink-flesh tones, a pencilto make the knuckle-lines more-fine, then some white on the crescent fingernails.In Paris later, I discovered that the plaster powder is named from the calcium sulfitemined near Montmartre. The elephant's name was Charley. Six-years old, askedto feed it, I stuffed the entire plastic bag in his trunk. When I returned to the zoowith my father, 14 years later, the elephant remembered, dousing me with water.I keep the plaster hand in a sweater drawer. The resemblance too striking to keepout. It reaches slightly upward while slightly closed, as if it's caught something.The body's clock of blood and bone. I'm eating the chocolate now. My handdark and sweet with it as I keep folding and unfolding the map of Paris.