Write me a library of love letters
Fill my vases with roses and vines
Buy me a closet of negligees
Stuff me with chocolates and fine wines
Promise me more, as you promised you would,
No invisible ink, to decay and dust,
I’ll drink fizzing drops ’til I’m sober
Knowing love isn’t red, but rust.
I am lost in a desert whirlpool that if I could only reach one hand out of I would be able to grasp the slither of cloth that is caught on the sighing winds as he runs from me.
He whispered in my ear. And now I am bewitched.
I woke up this morning and felt the urge to dance. There’s a ball tonight but I do not doubt that everyone there will be tiresome. I’ll dance, maybe there’ll be a new foppish dandy-boy for me to entertain myself with. Ladies Camilla and Soames will probably shoot daggers all night, my closest allies last season have turned on me. But I know that Camilla’s maids don’t properly clean the sheets and Soames husband has definitely got gout.
Robbie used to always cheer me up at the dance. He’d dance with me over all the other girls. He found them boring as well. Just like my sisters he’d say. And he’d let me play cards with his friends. When I was little he’d sit me on his lap and whisper the cards he’d want me to play. Yeah. Robbie would have made tomorrow better.
I keep expecting to one day come across mother at one of these parties. But maybe the old witch has finally passed away. She never met George, despite hearing about the grandkids from my sisters. How they found out I’ll never know, but received so lovely cards from them inviting them to tea. What a disaster that was. George was angry when he came back from the house today. I had Annie make his favourite supper and put his slippers by the fire. I kept the boys away from him, they disappoint him. I disappoint him.
I’ll find myself a dandy to amuse myself tonight.
I love to be loved, I love to wake up between silk sheets. This society represses me and liberates me.The contradiction of the age. With silk on my body but ankles hidden from view. M’lady Victoria may wear her widow’s garb in public, but in private she paints male nudes. I prefer to be the one painted. One of the reasons my family first disowned me, my love of natural beauty. I found it first with one of the stable-boys…it was when I turned my eye to a footman that things got out of hand. Robbie would have understood, though mother never believed me ‘Robert was not as you keep asserting Marie. Now scrub the rouge off your cheeks, you look like you could be walking the streets. Though no doubt you someday will.” And that was how she stalked out. Soft curls bouncing along with her heavy bustle. God I hate bustles.
