THE DOG licks the tropical body lotion from my shoulders. I'm too tired to stop her. I turn my face and draw closer to the tip of the pillowcase. Yesterday I drank out of the bottle in my living room. It was the square bottle. As old as my great-grandfather. Another man, who wasn't you, drank with me. He remembered when I was his girl and he would hold me like a song wavering in the back of his throat. And the space there, the circle of his voice, was silver and shining with all the sentences he wanted to sing. He thinks of another woman now. They have separated. She has a scar on the palm of her hand in the shape of his mouth. He tells me, this is proof of his love for her. He lay next to me last night and thought about her hand. His eyes closed, his fingers fell over the bones of my body, gentle as ash. And I thought of you. I turned you over in my mind. And over like a penny through someone else's fingers.


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