Unworn

I yank four nighties from hangers—
    silky slips too cheap
    to be called negligees,
unworn since my twenties.
I realize they must have
    looked pretty on me once,
Like discovering you had been fed
    cake in your sleep. 

So many seamstresses and
    hot machines’ needling wisps of
    sorbet-colored nylon and black lace
    to fake my body into womanliness.
It couldn’t have been just my skin
I had prettied up for men. 

When the women of my family
all gifted me bridal shower lingerie
    they were instructing in
    the joy of flimsy beauty
the way a mother blows
    hours of backyard soap bubbles
    with her toddler, saying—
    through the float and vanish—
    that now is for wasting hours
    in pastel distraction.

Now, at forty-three,
I offer only opacity—
    the gift of coverage,
    of cloaking the truth of
all of me. 

What is lingerie but celebration?
What are red-embroidered roses—
what is a silk-cord strap made to
    slip off a shoulder—
what is marabou trimming—
what are seed pearls stitched
    along a plunging neckline—
what is nylon sheer as July haze—
but gift wrap for
    an offering of youthfulness?