It’s a risky business, dressing myself.
Naked, I am least exposed.
I was built from the outside in,
swaddled early in soft fibrous love
grafted onto my raw bones in tight stitches,
so I could bear myself upright.
Now, it’s difficult.
Every morning, I find my seams have gaped.
When I walk from my bed to the toilet,
the burlesque clatter of beads dogs my steps, I leak
a trail of sequins from between my thighs,
attracting the crows.
I am turning inside out,
I can reach inside and finger
the soft wet nap of my life,
and digging deeper into my disgorged trunk,
pull a rag of lace, bitten by my bile
into delicate patterns, to hold up to the light.
My skin is nothing,
I am turning inside out.
I cannot find the dress that was my mother.
Whipcord pleated habit.
The hobbling platform boots that were my fathers’ shoulders
have lost a silver buckle.
A carnival panic rises
from the folds of my true nature
tangled at my feet, in intestinal shreds,
My skin is nothing.
I can’t get everything back inside,
and I cannot leave without it,
I will have to put it on, all of it.
My blistered heart is the pendant
I hang around my neck.
Mia Sera
Photo by VC Ferry
All Rights Reserved
© 2010
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