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The collection gathers lyrical sequences and sonnets in a confessional voice that probes modern female identity, desire, and social performance. One extended autobiographical sequence composed of many thirteen-line terzine reads like a novel without plot, tracing appetite, flirtation, indifference, and the exhilaration of urban fashion and nightlife; other poems, including more compact sonnets, record earlier romantic suffering and youthful passions. The speaker juxtaposes classical female archetypes with a contemporary Parisian model to explore ambivalence toward love, liberty, and reputation, using vivid sensory detail, psychological introspection, and recurring images of gaze, costume, jealousy, and theatricalized seduction.
Fu caro, un giorno, a quella che va sola
sentirsi preso da una mano il cuore
e averne un riso in bocca e un pianto in gola.
Era una mano ambigua, di pallore
femineo, di linea virile:
mano bella di dolce ingannatore.
Lenta in ogni suo gesto, ma febbrile
nella carezza, quasi da far male,
forte alla stretta da parere ostile.
Forse in sue vene un fluido mortale
fluiva ed ella con labbra voraci
lo suggeva, e un sapor torbido, eguale
a un acror di veleno era nei baci.