The Silk Blouse

I want more today. Like a sloppy barbecue sauce more, running down my chin, on my pants. I want to scoop it off the skin of my leg with the tip of my finger. I want to find bits of it in my hair hours later and wonder where it came from. I had a sense of something, to remember something in bed last night, a sort of buzzing, something I knew every one felt, but never noticed. But I can’t place it now. The air conditioner, the cat purring, the fan in the bathroom – I hear everything humming. It’s my Dad’s birthday today and so much has happened that has nothing to do with his birthday. I have a shirt I haven’t sent him yet; the phone I haven’t dialed yet. I’m ahead of him in time – so maybe I’m early still.

I’m wearing a silk blouse today and I wonder if the feeling of nothing on my skin can change what I say and what I do? Is it about being naked in front of people I hide from? I felt myself quiet this morning and shy in places I’d never been. I’m a watcher, an absorber even as a little girl I’d sit on the couch wide-eyed watching. I started to worry today that maybe I needed to say more, maybe I needed to speak to understand, but I pushed the ants in my chest away and said I understand how I understand and others speak because they need to speak. I’m not sorry anymore for the way I am in the world. I’m not sorry at all.