Esther Lee

You and I thigh deep in Suwannee River then in a bathtub. Spanish moss clogs the drain and a man carrying a green towel interrupts. We send him away once more knowing he'll return to watch. We're photographers shooting on location for Sylvia Plath's upcoming book,Savage Beauty—wrong poet or wrong book, I know, depending on how you look at it—however, I'm the one who is white this time, you're darker, maybe Quechua Indian or Spanish, like actor Antonio Banderas, with very defined stomach muscles and a slick throb of a penis. Years later I write a book about our affair. They bring me on one of those daytime talk shows, and before being reunited, we are kept in separate rooms, the television split screen, green-towel man in the audience. I'm still white, so are you, both of us middle-aged with freckles and strawberry-blonde hair. Later I'm the viewer at home thinking,Like hell they'll fall for each other.

Model prisoner or not, I won't. Silver lash, hound's tooth, meager sinful town's crook. I am nervous again. I could kill if you let me. But tonight, I'll be still under this palm. Zeroed out, the tea my toilet muck. Licorice and almond twisted beneath the sink, I'm lovely again. Come on with my dying. Today the globe's underside isn't pink, but rather, I look ahead toward what has happened.