UNDRESS ME, UNRAVEL

Flashing my colors

To draw you into the light

You flash your tits

To try and draw me in despite

I wonder why I wear clothes at all sometimes

It's not like people look at me any different

Pop me like a bubble

Watch how I can see clearly now

It's obvious the chicken came before the egg

Why do I wear clothes at all

If I was a little sexier

I could donate my body to art

If I was a little smarter

I could donate my body to science

After all, I might just convert my run-down body, a used car with high

mileage, into a museum exhibit

It's perfect

People don't have to get too close but they can still watch

What's incomplete, what doesn't add up or make sense

The blemishes I can't conceal, the anguish that can't be suppressed.

I rub my skin with an eraser

The scars that fold into a topographical map, blazing red with etched lines

that accentuate the contrast

I'm an equation that can only be left blank.

I'm already on display

I've already been put on notice

Like a car waiting to be towed

I'm not the best at being forthcoming

I'm not the one who you should call witness

I never paid attention much in Bible study

I can be my own judge

When I'm able to trust my discernment

Maybe I try too hard to be unlikeable

There's always a mental block that I'm trying to climb over

But some walls aren't meant to be torn down.

I'm out of place

I've missed a space

Like a couch picked off the curb for an apartment barely decorated

I hope this demonstrates that I have good taste

TCAGXTCTTTAGXAACXCTTT

I can be my own judge

When I can trust my own discernment

And heath other people's advice

I wear clothes to fit

A ton of geometric patterns

The symmetry is so that I can stay even

The angles and degrees of separation is so that I can stick out

I want to have my cake and eat it too

I probably need to starve

Makes the clothes I'm not even buying for myself fit even better

Once, a while back, I had a run-in with a tourist

Optimistic, high-energy and full of zest

We went to clothes shopping and had a chat about our lives,

the world at large and even bigger things beyond

He tore a hole through my shirt

Told me to dig to the center

He bought me a beer

Told me to drink until my legs wobbled

Until I bottomed out on my liver

But above all

I remembered him admitting that he doesn't fit in

He's attractive, sharp, witty and relatively extroverted

Has had a dozen different jobs in multiple careers and industries

Razor-thin hairs that coil off his chest

Always stands up straight and tall and not afraid to make eye contact

He doesn't fit in

He can't find his place, wonders if it even exits

He'd pay a billion dollars to go live in the first stable, functional

space colony

That told me a lot

I told him I could relate

He told me to toss out my whole wardrobe

Stand in the middle of my closet

and continue to dig to the center

What can I say now?

I'm left with a lot to hold

I'm left with too much to release

I'm out of place

I've missed a space

I've embraced my genetic destiny

I hope I'm reading this correctly

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