"pale peach silk in tissue paper..."

when I was a little girl,
my mother had a drawer for
her "delicates"
it had a small linen sachet filled with
"muget d'bois"
(lily of the valley)
and when you opened it, just a sliver...
a scent, like spring, and weddings, and
something so fresh it tickled your nose...
tiptoed out - for a moment - and danced in the air..

she never told us not to, but
there was something so private about that
scent, that I felt like a French spy
each time I stole into her room and
silently, slowly
slid open that slim drawer, in just the right way,
so that the dresser
handles did not rattle.

behind all that was cotton, and a small cache of
embroidered linen handkerchiefs in the near right corner,
tucked in the back, carefully wrapped in
faded ivory tissue paper, was a peach
slip of the softest silk with thin lace straps
woven with satin ribbons.

Long after i returned it to its hiding place,
i'd make up stories about this slip...
her war hero boyfriend sent it her, just before he was
killed on a mission behind enemy lines...

my mother was actually a husky-voiced
jazz singer who married my father because
she fell in love with him at dusk
on a street in Paris under full moon...and he
was really a famous piano player being
chased by the KGB for smuggling a ballerina
out of St. Petersburg one winter night, just before she
was to be sent to Siberia for refusing to
dance for a cruel General.

I still don't know what is true...

I don't think I want to...