Artifacts
I’ve ransacked the attic to find a time and place I fit in
better than today because I’m tired of seeing nothing that
faintly resembles me.
There are magazines with women who have my kinky red hair
and like to wear their lipstick dark and definite, like the
exclamation point of a sentence.
And a suitcase full of gingham skirts that sway the way
I do when I dance in front of the mirror to soft guitar and a
woman’s voice that sounds like rain.
Costume jewelry missing stones but saying more in the empty
spaces, a backwards braille, telling the world that once
there was something special there.