red dress

*After What Women Want by Kim Addonizio

Dear Readers,

It’s done, and so I want a red dress to walk around on the arm of a woman. I want it cheap so that its peeling hurts. Tight, so I wear it and in a fit tear it, or someone tears it off my chest. I want it careless and backless and like my back, backless so they wonder, what. the. hell. is. going on, underneath. I want to knock around crossroads until my heels break, buy berries, buy everything I never needed. Pass past the cow hide market, they’re filthy as fuck, slinging cows onto a dolly, dreaming of toying with me on a sticky truck while on their shoulders hoisting skin and blood. But no, I walk the walk of a cool astronaut, like I want to walk. But it’s never enough, and I want that red dress bad. I want it to tell me, no one is OK with it, their worst fear about me, a sickness in their stomach pits. To show them how little I care about them or anything else except what I’m drinking next. Do or die, I want, and when I find it, I’ll pull that body off its hanger, random against other bodies. Sail this planet full of ghosts and wear it like bones, like cries, like smoke wrapping a leaving light.

Yours,

A fucking mess.