Well, it’s 8am, and no sleep for me all night. I’ve been trying since two. I blame the cold medicine I took two–no, three days ago for throwing my schedule all out of whack. Hence the 5am poetry yesterday and here, now, the 8am poetry today. I gotta start sleeping at night or I’ll inundate my so-far-faithful audience.

A poem for Erin

She knew the dress would be too tight.

It was a knitted dress, homemade lining sewn in,
and spying it in her grandmother’s cedar chest
she knew also that it would look well on her.
That too-hot day,
the too-thick garment—
alone in her grandmother’s house,
she laid out the dress on the bed
and abandoned her shorts in a crumpled pile
on the bedroom floor.
the dress inched over her shoulders—oh, tight, but smooth,
a tug or two wedging it in place.
Her breasts squashed in it, her arms
restricted to 45 degrees,
she regarded herself in the mirror,
a funny old-fashioned girl,
comely, in an old knit dress. A fly
buzzed at the closed half of the half-open window.
No breeze stirred the gauze curtains.

When her grandmother returned,
the girl, in shorts again, shamefaced, explained.
The dress, too hot, too close, would not yield.
Difficulty breathing, half an hour’s stifling lonely struggle,
half-clothed and her sweat soaking into the old dress,
the delicate heirloom, the old treasure.
The clinging of the lining.
Trapped. She could not move her arms.
Discomfort, dehydration, panic. Scissors.
Her grandmother’s astonishment.
“but I made that dress in 1950…”
“I know, Grandma. I’m sorry.”

-Alissa