by Leslie Adrienne Miller

    It's true that you don't know them——nor do I

    know what I wanted their movement to say

    when I tucked them in an envelope with words

    for you. I thought it was my life caught

    in a warm night. I believed myself loved

    by the wan and delicate man you see dancing

    against the drop-off behind them all. But you

    can't see that they are on a mountain， that

    just beyond the railings is a ravine， abrupt

    and studded with thorn， beyond it， a river，

    dry bed of stone that， by the time you take

    the photo from the envelope， will have filled

    with green foam of cold torrents from high

    in the Alps. This is France， you think， as you look

    at the people dancing， but there is nothing of France

    visible save one branch of a tree close enough

    to catch in their hair. I could tell you that by the time

    you see this picture， the young girl with the long jaw

    launching her bared navel at the lens will have bedded

    the man you're afraid of losing me to. There is food

    on the table， French food， and so more beautiful for that，

    green olives in brine， a local cake in paper lace，

    sliced tomatoes that look in the flash like flesh

    with their red spill of curve and seed. I could tell you

    they grew not twenty meters from the table

    where you see them， that I picked them one day

    with the small woman who bares her breasts

    in this photo because she is about to leave us

    and doesn't know any other way to say she is sad.

    They're alive is all you'll say of the scene， which

    is to say you feel you're not. It is November

    by the time I've thought to send you the photo，

    by the time I feel myself ready to part with the image.

    By then， the woman of the manifest breasts has left us，

    and the one with the dark eyes who loved her

    has darker eyes. Very soon after this dancing stopped，

    the man with the hollow cheeks took the girl

    of the ripe navel to his bed because he， like you，

    is so afraid of dying， he invites it daily， to try him.

    The girl's last lover was a boy on heroin in Cairo

    with the possible end of them both asleep in his blood，

    and now too in the blood of the lover I wanted

    to save. Because you are married to a woman

    who insists on wearing her dead sister's clothes，

    you understand that while I am not in this picture，

    I am in this picture. Know that I need never see it again

    to see： the incessant knot of the girl's navel is a fist，

    an oily wad of sweet-sour girl flesh， a ball of tissue

    I twisted and crushed all of that evening， and since.

    You refuse to remember her name， or his， because you want

    to be my lover again， and the others must be kept

    abstract. They were alive you say again， not more，

    because the heart is nothing if not a grave. You want me

    because your wife holds out her familiar wrist to you

    in the terrible sleeve of her dead sister's dress，

    because I reach for the gaunt cheek of the man

    who worships at the luminous inch of belly on the girl

    who lifts her arms from the body of a boy none of us

    will ever know in Cairo， the girl， who dead center

    in the photo， lifts the potent， mocking extravagance

    of her flash-drenched arms， and dances for us all