I. The girl in the car is young. You’d notice that first: willowy girl, then the car, a red convertible in fair shape. He works on it obsessively. It’s perfect, purring June, cruising top-down. The girl’s been his for weeks. She’s younger than he likes, but he feels the sting of her hair on his face.
She’s caught in the flickering wind, sap buds, dark green in groves, rusty bushes at dusk. He’s always talking, a lulling voice in the green and wind. Now they stop near his house, bracketed by walls of spruce.
Hooking arms, he leads her in, a promise to the parents. But they are almost mute, the way color can leach from old photos.
She dims herself, steps back. but he’s a spring, talking faster and faster. The back door glows, everyone sees. This is partly about doors.
II. In the dim pool they flirt and dive. Did I say she was young? She emits crackling signals. Later, voices will circle like crows to pick at her greenness and lack. (For years she won’t enter closed spaces.)
The next two images are linked: in the basement alone and with him. I don’t want you to see this
although it’s well drawn. His back takes up most of the page and her fingers are knives. The door, it turns out, is not essential. Outside is mostly foliage, a clot of streets and the upstairs family is invisible, gone, something he knows completely.
There is more, years of more, and for months she’ll still look like a girl but has separated into sketches in a drawer, scribbles, mulch, some meant to be burned, some luminous.