why i wear clothes

She wore clothes to distract people
from her words;
she wore clothes full of colour
because she was drab;
she wore clothes that were different
because she didn’t know how else to be.

She wore clothes of character
so that their quirkiness would seep into her skin
and transform her bland blood,
turning her into a risk,
erasing the “girl” and replacing it with “deity”.

I wear clothes to compress my body
so that it fits into the tiny box
of their expectations, slicing off my excess fat
with loose thread,
making myself sick into a bucket labeled
bullshit.

I wear clothes to hide my body
in masses of fabric;
I wear clothes to hide red and white
scars engraved in my skin like an etch-a-sketch,
wrapping my body in thick sheets of made in china
until my blood stops flowing.