If I were you, I’d be dead by now, or dying. Dead or dying without a tenth of the madness you brought into this world to craze the rest of us too fond of lifeless resting. The day you walked naked out of a silk inheritance was the birth of a shameless polygamy that still makes our prudish hearts blush white. All the taboos and fearful intermarriage rules went out a window opened forever now to the explosive entrance of joyful mourning doves. No one but you— your flesh a living flattery of bloody imitation— has better grasped the final agony of chainsawed elephants. When I watch you weave daisies into Clare’s loose curls I want to shake your pierced hand in appreciation for its signs of love so tenderly spoken.