Bluebird

I was rambling today to Mark,
my favorite professor,
about how I don't wear dresses anymore.
It's a perfect day outside his office window
the way it's been these past few days
the blue of archetypes and fairytales
the blue that launched a million metaphors
occuring all across eternity
like specks of blue dripped, by jackson pollock, across a timeline that stretches out forever in every direction
the blue of the eyeballs of Disney princesses
with eyelashes that flutter open and closed helplessly.
Snow White and Cinderella would frolick on the lawn today,
butterflies caught in their hands
before they release them,
benevolently,
their red lips bowing like clouds.
the bottoms of their ball gowns would collect grass stains today
befitting a Tide commercial
and the squirrels would crawl up their arms and whisper stories in their ears that would make them giggle and sing and spin in circles, silk sown into the wind.

I wear jeans and baggy sweatshirts
a decision I wish
weren't a decision at all.
I wish I really believed I were born androgynous
like my beautiful friend
who always walks like she's marching in an army of her own making
and doesn't understand the way clothes and colors fit together.
But, goddammit
I like those shoes that look like black lines painted onto cripplingly high-heeled feet
i like the garbage bag dresses
in the photospreads of vogue
with the model whose hair is tangled and spilling in her face
her arms jagged,
like she's not quite human anymore,
a bird
splayed out on a cutting bird
in a gourmet kitchen.
In a day like today she would lie down on the grass and eat the dirt like a malnourished rebellious teenager.
she would point her head down
into her perfect neck
the sinews bent
so thin
so thin.
And if I went up to talk to her, she would only squawk epithets at me,
I bet.
But who knows? because models don't talk
until their crossover careers as actresses
and game show hosts
and by then they've lost their sinewed edge.

it's hard to believe our culture gave birth to both them and cinderella.
i mean, seriously, what kind of mother is that?
maybe she's bipolar and crack-cocaine addicted
suffering from poverty
splintering
going to seed
or maybe she just disappeared
like the mothers in Disney fairytales
died in childbirth
and all her little babies inherited the sin and guilt of that
raised on bottles of soy formula
mixed with too much water.

I wish i didn't have to turn my back on the models dying in the fields
like forgotten crops
or princesses
who awaken from eternal sleep when men kiss their lips--
their last hopes.

"But you do wear dresses, sometimes," he says,
"You did the other day. And that's okay. You don't have to choose."
He means the gala we both went to, for the human rights department.
I was volunteering,
Greeting rich wrinkled faces at the door.
I wore a tight black skirt and tights to cover up my leg hair
and high heels of course.
They clammored for importance on the marble floor
and I felt strangely in-place, a good actress.
commanding authority as I helped squinting old women with crooked lipstick peel back their name tags

and I'm sure it was the shoes.

I was so jealous when Mark walked in sweating in a wrinkled linen shirt
the kind he always wears to class.
He joked he'd spent weeks planning his outfit.
I actually had.
He leaned in close and said he'd biked there,
his eyes glimmering like the sun through the big windows.
We mocked the crystal chandeliers together,
and behind them was all that big blue through the long windows.
and what do you do with all that blue?
do you swallow it?
do you make it into ball gowns?
Well, while I was busy he slipped out the great big front wooden doors
and rode his bike through the blue,
like the end of a movie,
ET or Easy Rider.

I walked outside to greet someone and watched him and thought about waving
but didn't want to ruin the moment
so I grinned and clamored back inside,
a jagged little bird.