Outfit and Outpatient

As much as women can share is hanging in your closet. A dress, but inside of it, me. It's like this: One afternoon, a creature becomes pressed in her sweat and the day folds into her. It's close to six o'clock, an hour of walking. Of shape and the stories' shapes as they make their choices. Here on the bed, out of a bag. Red, no, pink, patent leather. "Now these are shoes!" The dresser has brought the clothing, the undressed is in need. A hotel room for a professor.
Pink, like your wedding sari, that afternoon. I newly met you, but now separated, your child held on. If a woman steps into the cold May is it rash? It was freezing, it seemed to have snowed. She laughs at the complication. The man on the porch is wide in bafflement. Neither of them children anymore, or adults. His knife is in the sink. What had she been thinking? Going down the steps now, she pulled her youth out of the house and stood it there, wearing a pair of worn converse and her freshly shaved legs.
The question is, how does one chose what to wear? To where? It is a matter of disclosure. And the nakedness? Honest trickster. Her undergarments are what hug the skin, what hold the secrets in place, what make the flesh more evident. Is total nudity a more complete nudity? There are things that we cannot see when we stand before everything. She risked more there on the sidewalk in her slip than if she'd been there stark naked. A combinacion her grandmother called it. The ancient piece united a skirt slip with a slip top all into one, soft as grey hair, night-prayers intended for God only. Her favorite pajamas were these old silken things a princess might wear. Embroidered trims always accompany sleep and remind her to cross herself. In the name of the father, the son, that we should cover our shame. This much her matriarchs had given her.
Women share clothing, like stories when they're in need. Hers becomes the other's for a while, and the stories in it also. She who agrees to wear it, adds her part, the fabric gathers, the narrative collects in the thread.
Police. Thinking, but upon review, decide that she was wearing something, after-all. Flesh colored. "Would you like a coat?" "It doesn't matter." "Where are your clothes?" She doesn't know where, wants to say this, forgot how to talk, forgot how a subject is important enough to speak about, isn't able to feel anything.
"I can't show my arms." There is no need to speak more, ritual is instinctive. If one voices reservations about her shape, the other must look at her own in kinship. The dresser tells herself, "Remember that part of the your body, scarred, which you hide? This is like that." It suffices to to explain.
It's dark in the bathroom, but her choices become clearer. With the lights off you can hear every ancestor who's come to say: you're on your own. But when the knife is borrowed, the owner is also there with you. The knife's thirst and your body's own will to stop are there. Off, the coat, the boots, off, the leggings, panties, bra, off, socks, hair-ties off. If there'd been scissors there, this might have ended with a few black sprigs of hair on the linoleum. Only an old pocket knife leads the way: this is going to take a while. Will, the proud, invincible Will, makes an appearance. It is she who defines the edges of our minds, of our fabric. The fates are nothing without her. What can those weavers do, she's taking the knife to it?
"Here I brought you a couple different options." "I don't have anything to wear, and the reading starts in ten minutes, thank you. I'm reading from something I'm working on, I'm not sure about this part. Would you read it and tell me if it's boring?"
Someone shuffles papers. The knife failed or maybe the courage did. It cut deep, but was impossible, no vein, nothing spilling to the floor. So another try, with the razor this time. It is sealed in the safety of plastic, dammit, open it, break it open. She hopes for peace wherever she's going, but instead is given pills, stitches, shrinks. Papers.
"And this, I brought this because the dress is a little see-through." "I haven't worn one of these since I was little." "I know, but I I love slips, this one is my favorite." "I wear this when I write," she wants to say, "I wore this to what I thought would be my end," But the woman is already in the bathroom, putting it on. It takes a minute but as the fabric settles and clings to her, an odd feeling. Somehow the other woman looks in the mirror and already knows she wanted her to know.
Sometimes womanhood precedes being human, it is the sturdy wall when you're dizzy, flailing. "Let me do one thing for myself" she says. Tries to restore dignity. "Could I shave my legs, please?" The nurse simplay hands her a Bic disposable razor, as if to say, "Do you, or don't you?" In a wing of the hospital reserved for souls dismantled, at the end of the hall, a suicidal youth lays in a heap of chronicled choices, in flannel scrubs sobbing and muttering, "These are not my clothes."