THESE DREAMS … LIKE WHITESHROUDED men carousing through me, like great fat bears. Pursue me, through me, purple and swollen. I always forget on waking. Get up now (right now) and put it all down the way the psych prof told me (hold me!) else it will vanish in the light. Extract a lungful and impale the stuff on some exhibit board. For the authorities to see. All there is of me. Big bears and snails and tornado tails. And don’t forget the small dogs sniping with teeth like barracuda. Who’ll come to look? There’s a charade. Who in the whole wide world qualifies as my interpreter after it’s put down in black and white? These lapdogs munching and spangled wishbones growing from my breast? There’s Arthur, he’d know, he knows everything. I’ll write him a letter. I’ll lie here and write him a good one … I lie here now on my cushioned ledge, composing. Where to begin? Begin at the beginning — a little description first. It’s pleasant here, very très and very gay, my high blue vaulted room with the white stalks of wornout sunshine coming — No. At the beginning. Farther back, try to remember. There was this place some time ago, somewhere west of my love, those dreary wastes those trackless sands … How was that? Best I can do. I lie here now on my snug soft silken ledge, myself beside inside me. Sometimes I am like this and sometimes the other, straddling the ledge, my skirt pushed up, my navel showing. That’s when they come; I think they are several people, burrowing in the luxuriant folds of me, like bugs and slugs the way it was when we were digging toward China under those lovely latticed porch steps. Sometimes I feel down there and I am all soft and mossy, so pretty all over like the little girl said. When they come they come very softly, cats on fat bear’s feet; they’re very quiet about it and nice in a way and I only cried out once. And that was in the beginning. It was funny how I got here, I don’t think I’ve ever told myself. I’m on the ledge mostly, my clothes pushed up over my head, but sometimes I get down and walk around. Some. Times. There were times I remember thinking Jay would come with the others but he never found the ledge. Such a nice place really, a really lovely ledge with a view of the lake and the olive farms and bluebonnets painted on the ceiling. There was this sweet man brought me here; he’s beside me now as I write; I feel the length of him against my legs. He always goes first before the others. And he’s the only one who ever really gets inside, crawling back on his hands and knees, gasping for air, like a nice baby. I remember Jay used to try. But he never had such a nice ledge as this one and there were always people watching. I’ll bring Jay up here with me sometime soon and hold him against my breast, my heart thumping like the first time, and he won’t have to know about the other; this other, he must be leaving soon, taking the bears and lapdogs with him. Sometimes I get down and walk around and mix myself a gin, but this other doesn’t. He just lies here next to me, sleeping. He’s been strangely inarticulate of late. Perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to be, (I’m not sure; I’m new around here like I said). I’m wide awake. Those dreams. I don’t remember any now and I was going to write them down, pulsing through me, inside-out me, all those scattered buttends. I recall a little of the first time. There was that blond girl, she wanted up here with him I know, the way she was hanging around, and he chose me and was nice, the way I know Jay would be if he could only find himself a ledge. It’s very quiet now; I can hear this old house groaning and a night bird outside my window, serene and peaceful, and feel the silk pajamas against my skin, my skin all Vicki-perfumed. You have to look for it, Arthur told me, you have to look for beauty and grace, and I tried, I tried so hard with my eyes closed and the sweet taste of somebody at the corners of my mouth …