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A Stranger’s Needs
by Lois P. Jones
(Chateau) Muzot was extremely primitive. The rooms were comfortable,
but there was no electricity and no running water in the house.
—Frida Baumgartner, housekeeper, 1921-1926.
In the beginning I knew nothing. Not of the steel
pots that required constant scrubbing, or the way
to press a shirt of linen—wait for the iron to smell
like burnt leaves on an October morning.
Not of how to bathe in a castle without plumbing—
cotton cloth dipped in an icy pail of water, a dab
of lavender soap to scent the skin. Nothing of how
to undress by paraffin lamp in the cold knot of December
or the desires of a body at twenty-six, all of me rising
into the belly. I had to learn to be invisible.
He wanted another Leni—a woman who walked like a cat
by moonlight and understood his needs with a single look.
How could I find my way to a man who has no map?
Sometimes I would say to the mirror,
this is not the life you promised. Sometimes I would say
to the bed, someone will carry me like a candle to their chapel.
Published in Spillway
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