With nothing to lose, she went to her father as a harlot and more or less ravished him in the darkness of his chambers to the cawing of the screech owl. She escaped his postcoital wrath by changing into a tree. Myrrha, to Sylvia, was a true artist in that she understood the redemptive power of degradation; the sureness of bringing oneself low in order to rise above. In the end, she ingeniously metamorphosed herself into a fruit-bearing medium.

Smoking was her mother’s frantic means of coping. It was her father’s alternate means of communication. It was a part of the body language with which Daddy pleaded to be left alone with his misery. Maybe Ted would show up before the night was over for one of his wardrobe and working-paper interludes. She could stand there and breathe in his ruminative little pipe signals while he pretended to sift through his belongings. She could funnel the air with her fingers, inhale, and feel the smoke skate over her tongue, piercing the stem of her vocal flower, and leaving her standing there when Ted had left, still gesturing like a harpist.

Or, if Ted didn’t come by tonight, she could make do by burning some roses. She could burn roses, one after the other, in an iron tray as she has done since she was nineteen and first underwent electroconvulsive therapy to combat the rabidity that her grief for her father had turned into. She could bundle her babies, get out the pram, and run to the market before it got much later. She could buy a dozen roses and turn them all to ashes. She could burn an ambrosial hole into the cotton barrow of her mind.

There are no roses in the market. It is ten degrees below zero, and the snow is as high as her hip. Instead, she might burn a poem or two. She might commit a poem to memory and then to flame. She has a laden new notebook and a despoiled mind. She needs, once again, to scent the garden.

There’s a nurse coming first thing in the morning to pre-interview her for yet another round of psychotherapy. They will leave no lobe unturned. He general practitioner has lost patience. He said that it was either submit to therapy or have her pill supply cut off entirely. She is looking forward to the morning’s examination as something that might make her feel like a normally depressive and unbalanced person once again. Instead of the victim of a haunting.

She is in her bedroom now. She is leaning forward to look into the bassinet where her two children are lying. She feels the cold draft coming in through the window. The candle flame, burning on the window box, bows at the wind’s solicitude. Her girl is almost too big for her crib. It is reckless to sleep her and her brother together. He is not her match in case things go cranky. But then again, he is her match and she is his.