Facing the Mannequin

She's been made to stand naked

in windows, waiting for her clothes

as they formed on sketch pads

under the drag of the designer's pencil.

She has sat in cardboard boxes

at the warehouse, bent at the waist,

spiders binding her feet with silk.

 

Now she is tired of all this.

She wants to open her plastic mouth and speak,

of the mannequin's life:

a life of entrances into rooms she cannot love,

how she is allowed only one gesture a month

to convey everything, how when women

hail taxis at night they become still

and they remind her of herself.

    ::

There is a fine line between the mannequin

and me and I draw it everyday. But sometimes

I sit in a chair too long, get lost

in thoughts of my ordinary life.

I recognize a gesture of mine in a window

and it startles me, consider

climbing up there to take it back.

 

But I am more than the gestures I make.

    ::

We eye each other through the glass,

enter a poker game in which our faces

give nothing away. I look at the patio

she is standing in, its lawnchairs and barbeque,

her calm in the middle of any meal.

 

She sees how the sidewalk extends

beyond the frame of her window,

the way my shirt moves when I breathe.