Esme(e) strode eastward.          She went beyond the poplars and the tamarisks. She bypassed the olive and wandered long upon the treeless waves of grass.

She took the boat, then, with its sewn bow curving it between manta wings and wings of moon on soft bespoken nights of winging wavelets whispering warm endearments quirky and plump as little cupids. Its sail was spun silk orange and lavender and Esme(e) wore a tulip turban of those very hues and stayed until her skin was dark as eyes and stayed until her bones were fine as flutes.

Ivory.          Carved ivory.

Esme(e) kept the ring of Indian ivory which had journeyed round the Horn of Africa  and knowing of jungles and rifts and mighty seas had sought to encircle them in some show of understanding. Foolish wish, foolish endeavor, but not alone, not once.

Esme(e) kept the ring. She had it still.          I could see it about her neck when she leaned forward to touch the book with her narrow fingertips.

White birds shattering outwards in an imbrication of desire and loss:          Edwina!

The cry was a hawk's tearing the canyon's weathered fabric beneath it.          It remained alone.

And what we knew in the meadow, under its pear-colored sky, was Esme(e)'s distillation: Edwina never knew that I loved her.

More sad than all else is that 1 thing.

The gull screamed once.

Grisaille towers the freezing trees pressed, importuned at the meadow's border. The earth beneath chilled and the grasses shuddered as if taken by dank wind.