Not to be just a "skinny sado-masochist"
twisted past all recognition, suspenders
over fishbone torso and tweenie nipples
singing in the death camp to your lover:
that was, Charlotte, a wise career move.
So was the departure to alter ego Paris.
Marriage suited you better than nakedness
set in the most perverse circumstances
imaginable. Older, In Under The Sand,
Ozon's film, your eyes identify the body
of your drowned husband, no longer human
but swollen by the sea, putrid and sexless.
Your gaze lies over the available absence
we all tend to as volatile organic creatures.
The loss and horror and the contamination
under the white dry sheets in the mortuary,
pulled aside like the skin from a surgical
wound. Your eyes hover, they stay open.
We see you struggle, there, in that moment with
what we all have to face. Your face dies for us.