Camille Claudel to Auguste Rodin—Montdevergues asylum, 1943

And so it happened: imprisonment
is what they’ll know of me.
As if I were already dead
the nurses wash my hair and sing
to each other. I no longer ask
to be left alone or reach
for soap. I do not use my hands.
And I don’t, I don’t, I don’t,
I don’t want to know where you are
living, if you kept my casts of plaster.
But, tell me, will you ever come? Is that you
lingering in the doorway at night
or do I shape the shadows
to your body? All my lovers
turned back to their sweethearts
or to bronze.