e hanging skin that had held your children; the breasts those children had sucked dry; the patch of scraggly pubic hair that hadn’t been cared for in years—all there, for the eyes of a man who had something better, younger, firmer to look at. I imagined her skin was smooth and free of purple veins and enduring hairs. I watched you watch me. And I wondered what this body meant to you now. Was it just a vessel? The ship that got you here, father of one beautiful daughter and a son you’d barely known?