Your bedroom bristles pink with puffed up satin.
Now confidential, childish, you sit cross-legged,
leaning in to test a shade of lipstick
on my twisted giggling mouth.
Faint with privilege
I pretend to speak your language
of kick-pleats, kirby grips, kitten heels,
cold teabags, toe dividers, toner,
eyelash curlers.
The strange litany
trips off your tongue,
while bangles, earrings, necklaces
are lifted from their cotton wool
to show like relics.
I watch, enthralled,
the tiny tortures visited on each brow
and make a promise to myself
to never never touch those tender hairs,
or cover up my shifting, breathing skin
with paste and powder,
or slide a blade against my long pale legs.
September 2002
