Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone. She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well,( the penis sleeping like a sea horse) the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted 

onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky. 

 

She pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. (She loves the hollow below the lowest rib, its cliff of skin.) Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters. 

 

What? she asks, coming out of her concentration. 

He turns his dark face with its grey eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth. He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.