from Letters
from Jack (a series in the voice of Jack the Ripper):
Mary Kelly-10 November 1888
Let me talk of Mary.
First, she was born
in Limerick, as you know, but what clues
the scene showed couldn't have told
how gaslamps glittered off her hair like pyrite.
How she sang violets through rum-
breath, the ballad of “Mother's Grave”
slicing the Whitechapel mist. Even
her name—Mary, Maria—seems to sing itself
as she would have.
When
I gave her
thirty shillings, enough to appease her
livid landlord, she took me back
to her room—13 Miller's Court—
the room I bought for her; took me
as if even the truest favors beg favors in return
She never screamed, never altoed “murder”
though it was in the air. Even when my knife smiled
her neck, she could only drink me
through the swelling whole notes of her pupils.
And there, in the East End
silence, in that peace, I knew her—
the most beautiful of these muses
I've made myself.
I
stole her heart,
may send part of it to you later. The rest
I'll keep, as much a part of me as she was.
And when I see it I'll think of how
I courted her till morning, her songs
in my breath even after her last
note dimmed itself from hearing,
how she wore death, becoming
as new jewels. What a couple
we made in those final hours.
What a pretty necklace I gave her.