January

Half in, half out of doorways, always ghost and girl at once, pale resonance with red hair, she is gauche in anything not January, puzzled at any kind of sun, at any red-rimmed noon in day or man. Afterwards asking “Did I do it right?,” as if fire were a craft, as if I could teach rhythms of woman and man; how lost her twenty lovers must have been— such sadness in red hair, white skin.

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