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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.
V'era qualcuno, un tempo, non veduto,
che ovunque mi seguiva, da vicino
senza stancarsi, con un passo muto.
La sera in qualche tacito cammino
parevami sentir sui miei capelli
rabbrividendo il suo profilo chino.
Forse eran molli ali di pipistrelli
che passavan su me con la prudenza
trepida di leggeri polpastrelli.
Io non sapevo, e m'affrettavo senza
paura, ma non più tanto leggera,
o volgevo con rapida movenza
gli occhi a scoprire dietro me chi v'era.