Cotillion Photo

These young women will last forever, posed like greyhounds,trapped in the silver crust of the frame.You can’t tell one from another, the breed is so pure.They will never run. Each one alofton a frozen wave of white cotillion laceto resemble marriage, to resemble fate.I remember July sun pouring downin a prickly meadow, and a garter-snake skinlaid out like fairy lingerie on a stone wall.This was Connecticut, there would be a stone wall.Crickets were scraping marrow from the day.I was young; I’d been alone for weeks.I painted the meadow morning and afternoontrying to capture the crackling sound with my brush.I was reading “Oedipus Rex.”I understood neither the snake skin nor the play.“Your life is one long night,” said Oedipusto the prophet, Oedipus, who saw nothing.Oak trees rustled in drought. In saffron grasssmall creatures skittered. There came a daywhen I said to myself, “I should prefer to sleep.”Small planets tasted dry and bitter on my tongue.And two days later I woke. Alone in the creaking barnat dusk, not knowing what day, what month, what year,but feeling the haul of earth rolling on its way.“It is not your fate that I should be your ruin,”the prophet said. I moved my arms,my legs, I unclenched my hands,and stood up dizzy from the cot. What was to comewould come in its own good timeoutside the frame. The moon was risingabove the hill, a shy wind gathered force,and trees, in their black silhouettes, linked arms.