Edith Sitwell and the Carnal World

7

Later, Virginia Woolf would say my hands
were lovely, and had folded into hers “like fans.”
She liked too, though that day was blowing a gale,
my red flounced dress, the details of which she pleated
into a letter to a well-loved, absent friend
who would, in turn, unfold it with the post—
a ritual both elegant and bloodless (Woolf could always pen
a gorgeous letter). But that season I preferred
a twilit expanse of lawn, words pocking the air
like peripatetic fireflies as childhood stories
waved their jars. Since her goal was another’s jealousy,
we weren’t destined, quite, to be real friends.
Still, I’d talk and wave my hands about,
stirring the silk-laced blades of her conceit.