dressing rooms

a response to Katrina’s “forever is finite: brick and mortar nostalgia"


In dressing rooms, I try on clothes and listen for sounds of mothers. 

Encouragement, disapproval, assistance, confusion—

any doting is mine now, 

picked-up commands discarded by over-it teenagers. 

I look in the mirror and 

dream about knocking on a tiny stall door to ask for a tampon—

oh, and what do you think of this summer dress?

pluck a seed from my tongue and pretend it’s stolen tobacco. 



1910, photographs of Flannelette garment fire test 





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