WORN

I stopped saving my good underwear. The white G-string with mother pearl outlining the sexy parts and the red satin with elastic crawling up the crack. They hide in the dark of the drawer covering up small sacks of seedless flowers that women save from weddings. The sacks have see-through lace tied with a blue ribbon and lie dormant like tumors in an armpit. I stopped saving the best ones made for special occasions. I wear the underwear now that are brand new and never wrinkle. The black ones smell of lavender in rain and stalwart hands and I wait for those hands to put them on and off and on again until they fall apart. I fall apart. I am lace and wrinkled. A thin yellow dress sticks to my cheeks when I sit on a bench next to pigeons. I pray the wind blows. I pray he left his underwear, the one pair he owned so I can wear them. They will fit the heart of my ass. I’ll stick my finger out of his penis in that pocket made for men. That secret place where they don’t have to say they remember me. It’s only underwear and they can always put me back in the dark with the other tumors. The tumors men put inside mason jars floating along with the babies that were killed in China for being born girls, while the male babies wait to be bought. I can be bought. I am sitting in a glass booth in my best underwear waiting to be bought. Give me half a chance and I will swallow up a man. As long as it’s dark, there’s a chance I won’t be seen. Then he can say what I want to hear, and all the time he sleeps I will hold him from behind. I will grip the part of him that I’ve become, and like a baby boy, he sleeps when he’s had enough. I am never full. I am nothing more than what I have allowed. I am mother pearl. I am lace. I am wrinkled.