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37 MATISSE’S ANTOINETTE Because they are truly her friends, they leave her tasting salt in her dreams, salt and green lemons. Cool porcelain, a windowsill, vanilla and wax. Her friends leave her flowers, and tied to the flowers, a note scratched on butcher paper. Blue-black gentian folded in a green wax cone. Their last cut hours sweated out formally, each stem arranged in the swirl-glazed tureen. In the bath, she stretches full-length— two bruised red peonies surface. Because she did not love him, she allowed one young man to stroke the sleek slope of her hip, wondering what he would find to possess, what she had to parcel, what one needs must conserve, always. How little it has to do with the body. ...

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