panache, perhaps

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.