You would think the drowning girl would save herself
but she’s not drowning in Millais’s bath water—
she’s a twenty-two-year-old model posing as Ophelia
in winter, and has put all of her worries on a shelf
to float in his tub. She’ll have a stillborn daughter
in ten years with Dante Rossetti, who will find her
overdosed in bed, drowning on laudanum
(she’ll have her stomach pumped, but it won’t save her)—
and here she is, high as a kite singing in bath water
with Millais thinking she’s clowning around with him
when she’s drowning.