I like your costume,
the woman said, and I said,
Thank you. Thing was,
I wasn’t wearing a costume.
I was dressed as me,
a middle-aged woman
in tall black boots,
black yoga pants,
a long gray sweater
and my dad’s gray hat.
It wasn’t till after she left
I laughed, delighted
to be called out on
dressing up as myself,
a person I’ve been
trying to be my whole life.
And where, I wondered,
does the costume end?
Does it include my hair?
My skin? My name?
My stories? My resume?
My voice? All of it
a costume of self
worn by whatever
is most alive inside.
This human frame
is just some get-up the infinite
has slipped into for a time,
even as it slips into other
costumes, one that looks
exactly like you. And hey,
I like your costume.
Posts Tagged ‘clothes’
On the Street in Lancaster, Ohio
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, costume, greeting, life, self, soul on October 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
Christie Sends Me a Photo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, friendship, habits, humor, laughter, patterns, solids on May 29, 2024| 7 Comments »
Her head is pasted onto my body
wearing a very plain black dress.
My head’s pasted onto her body
wearing a flamboyant jumpsuit
with pixilated technicolor chaos,
a jumpsuit she’s tried to get me
to wear for months.
She knows wearing patterns
makes me queasy. And what
is it in us that loves to make
our beloveds squirm?
I’m an easy target.
She knows I will squeal and
splutter and rail, so when I call
in a righteous outrage
over how she’s dressed my likeness
in a blenderized rainbow,
she laughs and I laugh
and something is so right
with the world then—
this goofy, giddy moment
when the stakes are low
and I am uncomfortable and prickly
and feel so deeply seen,
so able to laugh at the lines I draw.
I fall inside the laughter,
feel it wrap around me
bright as that flashy jumpsuit.
And I, who crave what is solid,
I dissolve into that brightness.
When Molly held out her tight leather vest
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, friendship, generosity, giving, kindness, Molly Venter, receiving, vest on May 21, 2024| 9 Comments »
with its two-foot-long green fringe
and suggested I could borrow it,
I felt that long familiar clench in my chest
as the word no puckered on my lips.
The clench said, who was I
to borrow clothes from Molly Venter?
It said who was I to wear
flirty and sexy green leather fringe?
It said, can’t you dress yourself?
I don’t know why I held out my hand,
but as soon as I did, I relaxed.
That whole night, as the long green fringe
swished and swayed all flirty around my thighs
no one else knew I was dressed in kindness.
No one knew I was alive with the blessing
of new friendship. But perhaps they could sense
I was honey-blissed on the inside with the thrill
of wearing Molly Venter’s vest,
so much more than just a sleeveless scrap of fabric—
I was wrapped in the velvet of her voice,
the willow tree of her wisdom,
the raw delight in her guitar
and the freedom that comes when
we receive the gifts of others.
Days later, dressed a slouchy cardigan,
I’m still wearing the generosity I saw in her eyes
as she handed me the vest—
I feel that fringe swish with every step I take.
This Land
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, ekphrasis, grief, wilderness on August 23, 2023| 8 Comments »
Grieving is a wilderness.
—Tara Brach, “Being with Love, Death and Grief,” July 13, 2023
Grieving is a wilderness I wear,
a long flaring coat
with cuffs of deep water
and hems lined with deserts
and birds that migrate
across my chest.
As soon as I think grief is one thing,
it’s another, vast expanses
with no known paths—
cracks to fall through,
cliffs to climb.
Sometimes, I slip from grief’s heavy silks,
and gaze at it as if it’s art.
There is terror in its folds.
But with buttes of gold
and storm-blue skies,
grief is also, my god,
so beautiful.
All Dressed Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, daughter, death, father, love on February 6, 2023| 15 Comments »
Before my father died,
he bought me a boxy
cream knit sweater
with crisp straight lines
and an elegant collar,
the kind of sweater
I imagine would be worn
by a woman more polished
than I. But my father insisted
on buying it, as if he
could see in me something
I couldn’t see myself.
Over a year after his death,
I still thank him every time
I slip my arms into the neatly
cuffed sleeves.
I thank him for dressing me
in his great belief in me.
It doesn’t matter
that I never left the house today—
that no-one else saw
how fine the weave,
how smart the cut.
If the sweater could speak
for my father, I imagine it would say,
Roxanne, you’re going to knock it
out of the park today.
All day as I do what life asks of me,
I am held by the love of my father—
a love that continues somehow
to grow. A love I still feel as close to me
as the sweater I’m wearing—
closer than that. Love as close
as the breath in my lungs,
as close as the words thank you
before they even reach my lips.
Though I Don’t Have an Album (Yet)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, dinner, family, music on February 3, 2023| 7 Comments »
Tonight at dinner my daughter and husband
bicker over who will get my plus one ticket
to the Grammys next year. We plan
what we’ll wear to walk the red carpet—
blue for my daughter, no tie for my husband.
I’ll borrow a friend’s green dress and tall boots.
So much to plan already. Where will stay?
Hair down? Rent a car? I wouldn’t want
to meet the moment ill-equipped—
not like this moment in which I am fully prepared
to make an entrance in my slouchy gray sweater
and low, messy bun, prepared to show up
with my short nails and bare face and oud perfume.
I’m so ready for this moment at the dinner table
with its red placemats, homemade mac and cheese,
jazz in the air and quirky conversation.
I don’t even have an album, yet,
and already I know I’m a winner.
One Cleaning the Closet of the Mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, clothes, mindfulness, nothing, thoughts on January 8, 2023| 6 Comments »
how threadbare these thoughts
I’ve chosen to wear every day—
replacing them with nothing
After the Undressing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, compassion, naked on April 2, 2022| 6 Comments »
I had thought I was already naked.
I had thought I had shed
the mask, the robe, the dress,
the flimsy garments that tease.
I thought I had nothing left
to remove. Then came
slipping out of my laugh.
Taking off my smile.
Dropping my role, my hope.
Losing what I thought I knew.
I could never have said yes to this.
It is happening anyway.
I am less myself, only more.
There is a shawl of compassion, though—
its threads made of sunrise gold.
This. Whoever does the undressing
wraps me now in this.
The Woman Who Wears Only Solids Remembers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, clothes, life, youth on February 12, 2021| 2 Comments »
That was the year I only bought clothes imported from Bali—
baggy pants in a geometric black-and-white print,
long swishy flowery skirts in bright blues
and thin dresses with intricate knot designs.
I don’t know what became of them all—
Good Will, I suppose. Not that I want them back,
but I miss the girl who felt like a treasure in them,
who wore them lightly, who danced and ran in them,
who twirled in the middle of a field
so the fabric would ripple out and would fall down
in the grass and not worry about the stains.
I miss the girl who shrugged out of those clothes
every time she was near an alpine lake,
slipping nakedly into the icy clear water.
I miss how she wore her life back then,
like something exotic, something beautiful,
something new she couldn’t wait to try on.
One More Layer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, identity, losing the self on June 5, 2020| 4 Comments »
the more I wear this story
of myself, the more
it grows thin, ravels,
a sweater filled with holes—
I fall through them
With the Long Sleeves that Can Be Worn Closed or Open
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, happiness, inside job on February 12, 2020| 2 Comments »
I keep staring at it in the catalog at the Ametist linen/modal dress,
in amethyst, a linen shirt dress the catalog describes
as “wonderfully forgiving.” Well, that sounds good, of course.
And the dress, with its shimmering linen, its turquoise
and aubergine flowers, well, it’s beautiful. And perhaps
because I do not feel beautiful, I stare at it as if
it has a secret I need woven into its threads, as if I could buy it
and then be as happy as the model who is walking
through a sunlit field with a large bouquet of long-stemmed
dusky penstemon in her hand. She looks over her shoulder
as if there is someone or something there that delights her,
as surely everything does when she is wearing
her amethyst Ametist linen/modal dress with its “generous fit.”
Perhaps I would rather not remember that I must
be the one who is generous, I must be the one who
is “wonderfully forgiving.” Easier to imagine slipping into a dress
and letting the fabric do all the work. Harder to remember
that beauty is less about how we look and more about
the way we choose to see. Oh, to buy that dress
so that I might notice how little joy it really brings me.
Is this the way we meet the self? Through disappointment?
I decide to make my own catalog. Of my clothes.
I walk through the kitchen, modeling my yoga pants
and a fuzzy top pretending I am me
walking through the kitchen in my yoga pants and fuzzy top.
It’s not much of a stretch. I smile over my shoulder
at the tea pot, the dishes that need washing, a lunch box.
And why not smile? Perhaps there’s a secret I need
woven into something here—in the stack of mail,
in the charging cord, in the marker, the dish towel—
some chance for delight, something beautiful waiting
if only I choose to see the shimmer.
Practicing KonMari
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, clothes, KonMari, poem, poetry on November 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I did it. Exactly as she said.
I removed everything
from my closets and drawers,
and touched each thing—
every sock, every shirt, every shoe—
and I asked them, “Do you bring me joy?”
Joy, it turns out, wears many clothes.
She likes scarves. Wide necklines.
Black pants. She loves long knit dresses
and tall leather boots. She needs
lots of sweaters and many gardening gloves.
And all the while I did it,
I did as she said, I visualized
the life I want,
which is apparently a life
in which my closet is full of black pants
and scarves and tall leather boots—
a life in which I talk to my clothes
and smile as they whisper back to me,
Joy, Joy, Joy.
Not Out of the Closet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, find holiness in the everyday, poem, poetry, wardrobe on August 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
They hang in the closet, their shoulders fading,
all these clothes I can’t bear to take
to the Second Chance.
The black cocktail dress with the plunging neck
its bodice snug, its open back,
made for a sassy uptown evening,
and the deep red jacket, more froth than cloth,
artsy and hand stitched, something to wear
on stage or to an art opening.
The silvery coat that fits like snake skin,
and the long silk skirt just right for a beach
that I’ve never been to in France.
Every day I walk to the same plastic hanger
in the middle of the closet and pull off the same
black cotton dress, somewhat shapeless,
perfect for pulling dandelions in the garden
or going to the grocery store to buy eggs,
for driving my son to math camp or hiking in Bear Creek.
Every day I choose that same black dress, every day, and why not,
when it’s equally well suited for paying bills
and washing breakfast dishes and dusting the unplayed piano.
Just right for waiting on hold for the insurance company
or writing an article about the history of kitchens or
changing the water in the fish tank, or, for that matter,
for cleaning the closet as I look again at all those beautiful clothes
and choose to keep them, let them hang right where they are,
a testament to some other woman I used to be. Huh, she was younger,
but you know, I almost look like her.