Le Spectre de la Rose

When three men beat you bloody at a Kansas rest stopit might as well have been your mother,a handful of sighs compared to your six feet,but all the pretty things in the worldbelonged to her. You were still eight in her closetlike you'd blundered onto a dark stage,the dangled silks and ginghams like a curtainas you wormed your way inside a dress,told yourself you can be whatever you wantthe way they let Nijinsky decide a rose. His motherdanced a complete ballet the night of his birth,yours every time she asked you to zip her up.You adopted her grace and she made you emergewith great pain forever. They had to sew himeach time into his intricate delusion, syntheticyet virginal—it fit so perfectly like a body he leftin a heap, not a crime scene, just a molted chrysalisamong the wine glasses and ashtrays.He had your desperate flair for intrigue,except more and with the air, lived thatexplosive moment. Nothing like him,you wore your bruises like him, rained red petalsin a school, a motel, the alleybehind a bar. Every time someone shookhis head, she was the one you foughtto become, worshipping her like a roseloves dirt, in terror and in secret, moving with herinside you like music in a ruthless pas de deux.