After the bal masqué, her young lover (dressed as Eros)
requested that she give him orders.
Why not? she thought (disguised
as Catherine the Great), and pleased
him by telling him how to please her,
and was this not love?
She told him to stay the night, asked him to weave
her a new myth. Together,

he said, we will plunge into the salt of the open ocean, and swim
     toward a new city,
where you have no reason to know that frankincense oil appears to
     distinguish cancerous from normal bladder cells and suppress
     cancer cell viability.
In this city, all citrus fruit grows sweet.
Take me, she said, lying back, now,
her hair on his pillow
spreading out into the shape of an oak leaf.