Thrift Store Protocol

It is easy to pride the semblance of self
in the discarding of another’s desire.

My eye intent on buttoned silks
in Mission, Harlequin, Savers, St. Vincent’s
Flip, Buffalo and The Waste Land.

Testing the assumptions of body
I wander amidst the possibilities:

A life in tweed, the confidence of a red plastic mac,
tap shoes for the brave, how to sing denim blues,

Or the crocheted insistence of a dress
that shows too much-

How it files the revelatory I at dizzying
angles to find no narrative.

I could instagram my childhood
the too-big shoes, sun-spent in the seventies.

With a bandana and a cowboy hat,
shuffling across tarmac towards a parent’s path.