Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out. - Djuna Barnes

The wise men say that the remembrance of things past is all that we have for the future, and am I to blame if I've turned up this time as I shouldn't have been, when it was a high soprano I wanted, and deep corn curls to my bum, with a womb as of a fishing schooner? And what do I get but a face on me like an old child's bottom - is that happiness, do you think?

Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.

the ballerina on perfected toe
Spins to the axis of a fortitude
That is the sum of all her yesterdays.