The day I did not end up swimming
I have my bikini on, it makes me look like I have
some boobs. Yesterday at the market I held
up a big white peach and said to Annie, This is the size
boob I used to want, and she said it was a little big,
she shook her head at me, it was a B-maybe-a-C,
and she’s got As and I’ve got As and anyway what would we do
with that much more flesh? Annie’s a fruit
farmer and she’s got minor boobs but surplus
plums. She liked that yesterday’s market band was made
of dykes and so did I—girls on instruments is much
too rare. But back to the bikini—it’s made of blues
I love and I chose it to impersonate another girl,
that water type, eyes coppered by the sun with hair
blonde and knotted from the sand. I’m not that girl
at all; the ocean bullies me. I come up spitting
with my top and bottom moved and showing way
too much. I’m not the girl who owns a scooter either,
or the one who bakes to ease her stress. I’m usually
the one undressing or undressed, who looks alright
in layered clothes or none at all, not this bra
and undie set pretending to be outerwear for swimming.
I can’t accessorize or alter it, can’t make it somehow
not a brand’s idea of beach. Like Caity’s said, I hate to look
like anybody else and especially like everybody.
But Caity-all-the-way-in-Georgia: I’ll wear a bridesmaid’s
dress for you. I’ll wear whatever color that you choose
for us even if it’s closest to the color pink, a hue that
pukes atop me. I’ll wear it loud and proudly and will
only alter it as much as you allow or disallow me, just
one feather on the collar or pinned into the side. Because
on the day of someone else’s marriage, I’m really just
a woman in a dress like everybody else, there to swoon
and cry about some love performed, and for that role
any boobs at all will do, any outfit that you choose.
panache, perhaps 