She’s not there

She contemplates this echo of her thigh,
this grey ghost of her arm:
cardboard copies he made
up in his studio
on the old street.

He’d say, today: I have no memory
whatever of that time.
That blue plume? What he tried?
No. I can tell you that
it is not true.

He’d join her in this pallid gallery
and grope that lofted limb
again, and shake his head
and, baffled, say, oh no –
have we two met?

They’ve met; but never mind. Now, anyway,
She grandly tours the room,
wending from nude to nude.
Intense attendants tut
and hiss: no photos!

She does not say what caught her absent eye
back then, beneath the storm:
not him, not what he did;
instead, a lightning show,
scarring the skylight.

She’s not there

She looks right through herself to see
not her as seen by him,
not her as not displayed,
but this accidental art.
She looks right through.