up the pants that still hung in his closet

beneath which the dog slept, breathing in

M’s last particles until,

out of some extravagant kindness

or pity, she gave the dog

one of his sweaters. She watched

as the dog circled and pawed at it, tearing

at the tissuey material in his attempts

to fall asleep. Impossible

not to love such need, she thought, telling herself

it was this passion to come as close

as possible to what he’d never possess

that attracted her: she could not stop

touching him, pulling him

to her, gathering up the thick folds

of neck skin between her fingers, kneading

into her palms the hot popcorn smell

of his feet, his ears. Waking

in bed to a misty smear spread

across her sheets, red welts on her chest

from where he scratched and bit her.

She wanted to make the dog feel

for her some part of what was powerful

about his grief for M. She even began

to hate M’s things, the cashmere sweater

now tossed in the trash, books and pants

burned, pictures of him swept

off the bedroom shelf. Grief,

her mother said, when she came to visit,

excusing her daughter’s furious

disposals. Though be careful you don’t

lose control of yourself, she warned,

as if too much feeling must be

a diminishment. The same lecture

she’d been given in high school

the night a boy came hours

late for a date, and still she ran,

uncomplainingly, to meet him. Aren’t you

ashamed of yourself, her mother had said

upon her return, meaning

how willingly she had let herself

be debased. But love was a debasement.

In their first few months of courtship, M

had liked to crawl at her feet

during sex, eating the crackers

she held out as communion wafers, dressed

in the priest’s black chasuble

he’d found for them: some nightmare-

colored sheath he’d scared up

from a local theater closet.

And she’d indulged him: their marriage,

their sex, she couldn’t help it,

even when he asked her

to beat him, she did it: she’d never seen

anyone want something so nakedly before.

Three months after M’s death, the dog

got fleas. And she watched him, mesmerized,

scratch at the thin skin of his ears, biting

at his legs and belly until they bled,

until she too let herself become

infested with them: her clothes, her sheets

speckled with the fat black pinheads

feasting on them both, the blood they shared

raising welts over her ribs. One body,

M once said as they lay, tangled

together, her legs pressed between his—

or was it his between hers?—their long limbs

muscular and bare, covered in the late

afternoon light with the same

fine gold furze of hair. How close she’d come

to really loving him. You must get rid

of that animal, her mother declared

one night at the kitchen table, horrified