Poem for Clothes Left in Another Country

 

Sometimes you come back to me, invoked by accident

        – a similar pigment, something almost kindred         in the way you absorbed the light – and I am   seduced, unstitched with the thought of you.

I come undone like a cascade of beads from the

broken filament of my memory, seeing myself

 

as if in a mirror or a photograph: your color, your

cut, your grace on my body, the witchery I

       bought you for. Here a chemise’s boatlike sweep

on the clavicle, here a plunge deep as risk, here a

gossamer blush, like a remembered kiss. Garland of feathers

   the color of my birthstone. Shawls gathered coyly,

shrugged off in cunning. Trinkets twinkling with suggestion.

 Lace and satin, stepped into, steeped in anticipation.

Things I bought as much for the undressing as for the dress.

      Vine of bells for the wrist, twins of the same  for the ankles, so a lover might learn the sound of

a bed being left. Batik. Those leopard print boots

  ribboned up the thigh, loved once               and boxed ever since.

 

How delicate, the weave of incident and accouterment.

             Gypsy silver. The bias cut in bottle   green, crown of flowers, kalamkari acquired in the sickness   of another nostalgia. Skirt, sunlit as Pondicherry ochre.

Guile of womanly sway in nonchalant denim. Jacquard

     velvet bought when too young to wear it.

Mandarin collar. Basque translucent as rose quartz.

         What I wore that night, what I would   wear if only   – if only –    I had it tonight.

Drape of poncho or pashmina, for a sagacious guise.

Crepe crinkling like a laugh. Power and play

     of gentleman’s fedora. Cowgirl’s hat.

The simplicity of a tight black thing, amiable

                        with everything.

Embroidery. Mirrorwork. Say it slowly – suede.

 

Oh these splendorous

 things fit for a queen – if only they weren’t                   in quarantine.

 

Let me have them back for a day,

            if not for tonight. How   I’d set this town on fire:

the damage of desire, kindled with

     couture and thrift shop glee,

tinder of greed and regret,

struck alight with the

heartbreak of my highest heels.

~ Sharanya Manivannan

 

Sharanya Manivannan was born in Madras, India in 1985, and grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. She represented Malaysia at Poetry Parnassus in 2012, and was a spotlight writer in The Missing Slate’s seventh issue.