He took a dipped brush, swept
it into pieces of me in a pile
beside an unmade bed. He called it Everywoman, but I
recognized my hair, my breast.

There might have been three
nipples–when asked, he said
the third was a little toe,
and it could have been. Later,
he said it was a button
from the shirt he liked to have me
out of, and that could have been, too.

I wore the shirt to paint
myself, until it caked too stiff
for wear and he was gone and my
enthusiasm for oils with him.

He called from school to say
he’d found a series–pieces
of me, a leg in a bathub,
an elbow on a kitchen counter,
a hand on the back of a chair,
a way to paint my absence.