Letter to Emma Bovary, and: The Mothers

Letter to Emma Bovary

I

Emma, my students don’t like you. The women think they see through you, the men

just want to fuck you. No one mutters, “Emma, c’est moi.” You’re bad with money,

sick with romance, you shove your little Berthe so she falls and cuts her head

just because she toddles up to hug you. Even your suicide—botched—

the arsenic eating your guts. Vomiting, screaming with pain. You thought it could be beautiful.

II

As a girl I sat by the window, dreaming, face in my hands, eyes unfocused on the spiky leaves in the thicket before me.

My holy vow, like yours, to languish in the dream of how I loved myself—swathed in poufs of silk, staring into the flames of two tall candles.

Now I scurry through the days, dust rag in one hand, checklist in the other—

is February midnight, I’m wondering where you’ve gone. When did I get so good? .

III

Your tongue flicks out to taste the final sweetness in the liqueur glass.

When you balance on the wet stones, laughing, the field is yours, all paths

are yours, your parasol teeters gaily in the sunlight, your skirts caress your legs as they flow and swirl around you.

You run across the dew-soaked grass early in the morning.

You turn to him with little cries. His voice is full of sleep. .

But Rodolphe buries that scrap of paper in the basket of apricots, and gallops off, abandoning you. .

IV

It all comes back to an empty field, winter twilight, the greyhound escaped from your carriage

and vanished forever behind the line of trees— and the terror that rises in your throat then.

It all comes back to woodlice crawling out of frozen firewood, the plaster priest

crumbling all winter in your garden. And soup, slurped soup.

Your desire and desolation. Your furious silence, as well-meaning Charles smiles and swallows.

V

Here’s what you do not know:

Your life melts around you like moonbeams.

Your daughter will starve in the cotton mill.

After you die, dumb faithful Charles will gather a lock of your hair.

His scissors will snick your neck, as bloodless as paper.

The Mothers

Therefore do not work, for the night cometh wherein the voices of the Mothers will pulse in blackberries that ripen on the cliff and whir around you like dragonflies, stitch the licks of cloud with their bone needles.