Dress As Vehicle,
As I’m waking Saturday morning I catch a fragment
of a dream. A floor-length gown, quilted, padded and weighted,
like the blanket you surprised me with
at Christmas. Stitched satin in aquamarine
blue and green swirls. It fits me like second skin.
As I’m zippered up my back I feel made.
I feel a jolt of love, of protection.
The dress is my essence. Now I’m complete.
I hike it up from behind me like a bustle, and do a
a slapstick jig - perfection.
Only later it dawns on me.
The dress is a gift. From you Nick, of course.
Damn, I want you to have seen me in this dress.
To have seen me be this content and complete.
I want you to have made this dress while I watched,
the way you made me those crystal beaded curtains,
as we sat and inhaled the impeachment,
but then you took all the strands apart again.
You never settle for an ounce of imperfection.
I can imagine you in a pressed white linen suit.
Like the tailor, Daniel Day Lewis,
in The Phantom Thread. You were just
as severe as the great and meticulous
dressmaker. Your closet is still filled with your
carefully made suits, vests, ties, your scarves and hats.
I haven’t touched your polished shoes that I used to
unlace and place beside the bed.
Not for a year have I dared to dislodge any of you
from that dark space.
I can’t stop wishing you will step out.
I know, It’s a miracle that you have made me a dress at all,
let alone a vehicle for traveling between worlds.
And that I have recognized it as an iInvitation to the dance.
Since I’ve set out to find you you’ve made me
a dress for ballast, a dress as armor.
A dress for a shapeshifter, a dress as a house and home.
This gift is so big.
Apparently you are designing my voyage,
just as you insisted in person.
When alive you wanted to buy me dresses that you chose
for me. Not ones I picked that were never special enough.
The message you still send is you’re still in charge.
And here I am alive.
That my story goes on without yours is so absurd
and so untenable. I’m just watching myself wear out.
Watching Trump live while you don’t.
I can’t stop wishing for the reverse.
There can’t be a world in which you die and he lives.
I just saw a film without you. It’s about a love affair between
a diver and an octopus. Each can only
visit the other’s atmosphere for a few minutes a day -
a reverse mermaid story. Mostly it is the man
who holds his breath under water.
Mostly it is me who holds mine, hoping to find a way to you.
In my meditation a few days ago
I slid inside of my dress, and we were in motion.
I summoned it all to come, and I let myself follow.
It swallowed itself, the skirt billowing out and up over my head.
We became a jellyfish, an octopus, the chameleon.
Dress made its own waves of light that pulsed with ink.
Then nothing recognizable.
Just purple added to the deep blue repertoire
with hints of pink and black.
I didn’t instruct or imagine. I followed the waves
of magnetic color arising, falling, and passing.
My adrenals screamed to run and hide, but I stayed in,
steady as I could. I thought a crazy thought: controlled burn.
A controlled burn protects the forest.
In my dress I can take the real heat.
Is this what you are made of now? I whispered.
I felt Death slipping in and passing through these purple waves.
If this is what you are made of now, then I want to meet it.
Like the hot spark we always felt in each other’s presence.
If we can dance in all realms and continue our great collaboration,
it was almost worth our pairing so late,
and you departing so early.
How is it that I can wish for someone else’s death daily,
and for our eternal life at the same time?
I told friends that if he lived
and you didn’t, that I would go and kill him.
I have nothing to lose.
I even frightened my brother. He got so drunk he thought he heard
the authorities banging at all my loose windows.
Well, at least I have the dress for it.
Reminder:
Writers Daily Dive salon meets weekdays at 1:00.
Episode #15: A Suitable Vessel For Magic