Scaffolding

by Lauren Elkin

I can’t look away from the hipbone as the light catches it, it is such a true image of a hipbone, it is Clémentine’s and it is also my own, and it is also Jonathan’s, and it is also David’s, every hipbone I’ve ever seen is there, it makes me want to touch everyone’s hipbones, a place

more intimate than anywhere else on the body, but especially hers. No one is looking and I touch my thumb lightly to the canvas.

Tous les désirs visent la jouissance, he writes, all desire desires its expression,