No one to share clothes with
for me
as a young women
the age
clothes -sharing
was a sign of sisterly best
friendness when
the shine
of those girlhood intimacies
made me want to live
to the next day in
the great glow
of extravagant like-you-ness
with someone
who happened to walk
the same way
to school
Instead I had my younger sister
a waif
of a slip
of a willow of
a child
and my mother, also
reed-like, with such spectacular
body dysmorphia,
and the need to stay
connected
by all meanspossible,
that she’d hand me
HERE
TRY
THIS
shirts and
sweaters,
and skirts
of a kind her 30- something
Talbots-loving peers wore
So
at 13 and in some cases
still
too large for her things
we did not fit.
Later
in college when
I’d slimmed
down for a brief window
in this life
I found myself
in her closet
searching
for something
appropriate
for a family
celebration
aware that army pants
and a torn flannel shirt
wouldn’t have cut it.
I found
a black dress,
some lovely
pink pearls
that weren’t me
but looked pretty cool
in the mirror
of me
made over
in her image.
Early Morning Poems 