| day forty-nine |

“In this play I wrote, a woman appears naked on stage. She has a black square painted on her bare stomach. She tries to convince the gentleman on stage that it is a painting of the two of them in a boat on a lake on a moonless night.This is you paddling from the stern, she says. He sees nothing but a black square. Trees are blowing gently in the wind right below my ribs. She makes a gesture to her ribs and starts crying. Silence fills the stage as he touches the painting with his finger. He gets on his knees to study it. A pirate enters.”