Where now?

Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang:

     I am the boy
     That can enjoy
     Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

And no more turn aside and brood.

empty-room