DEAR SIGLUND-

I am writing to tell you
I will never return.
I said this once
in anger, but now I tell you
it is true.  I live
in San Francisco,
a woman you would not know-
a woman who eats white bread
and fish, who owns a carpet
but has no bed, who wears her hair cut short,
grows dill and basil
in a window box.

This is a woman
who will not live
with her heart turned in,
silent with guilt, bare 
and hard as quarry rock.
She could never be
her husband's nurse, his watch dog,
his lost arm.

Siglund, the houses here are steep.
Colors fade and sharpen
with the fog.
There is water enough to bear ships
and there is pageantry enough in me
for all their coming and going.
As you see, I have forgiven
myself everything.
Love, Nella

			Lucille Murphy