La Tulipe

After midnight, we will practice austerity,

but before midnight we may eat well and gossip,

and kiss if we are married or betrothed—

and dance chez Latulippe.

La Tulipe was once a woman,

a Rose who once loved men and dancing and kicking and screaming

mostly in joy. Sa tulipe was once coveted by many here—

perhaps sa tulipe is why the handsome stranger shows up une heure avant le Carême,

extending a Rose, failing to remove his black gloves when asked—

for it is sin to be object of envy, a woman looking like sex.

We suspect sex is what drew the stranger,

whose carriage melted snow, to Rose.

Perhaps the Devil is why Rose now sits in a nunnery:

rattles her bars, teeth clenched, practices deprivation,

lets an old woman scrub her austere back in the bathtub.

She floats in rosewater playing il m’aime, il ne m’aime pas, remembers men

and how it felt when they watched her dance—

dance just one minute too late, just

one minute past midnight with just one stranger—

Of course, now there is no man to love Rose but God.

Perhaps, we mutter amongst ourselves, there never was.

Rose Jean Bostwick is a lesbian writer based in Montreal, Quebec. She has published one short fiction chapbook, And They Were Roommates (Bottlecap Press), and has placed work in Schuyhill Valley Journal, Wrongdoing Magazine, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and others. Read more of her work at rosejeanwrites.com.