948: Our Skirt
"Our Skirt"
Kathy Boudin
You were forty-five and I was fourteen
when you gave me the skirt.
"It's from Paris!" you said
as if that would impress me
who at best had mixed feelings
about skirts.
But I was drawn by that summer cotton
with splashes of black and white--like paint
dabbed by an eager artist.
I borrowed your skirt
and it moved like waves
as I danced at a ninth grade party.
Wearing it date after date
including my first dinner with acollege man.
I never was much for buying new clothes,
once I liked something it stayed with me for years.
I remember the day I tried
ironing your skirt,
so wide it seemed to go on and on
like a western sky.
Then I smelled the burning
and, crushed, saw that I had left a red-brown scorch
on that painting.
But you, Mother, you understood
because ironing was not your thing either.
And over the years your skirt became my skirt
until I left it and other parts of home with you.
Now you are eighty and I almost fifty.
We sit across from each other
in the prison visiting room.
Your soft gray-thin hair twirls into style.
I follow the lines on your face, paths lit by your eyes
until my gaze comes to rest
on the black and white,
on the years
that our skirt has endured.
Kathy Boudin
You were forty-five and I was fourteen
when you gave me the skirt.
"It's from Paris!" you said
as if that would impress me
who at best had mixed feelings
about skirts.
But I was drawn by that summer cotton
with splashes of black and white--like paint
dabbed by an eager artist.
I borrowed your skirt
and it moved like waves
as I danced at a ninth grade party.
Wearing it date after date
including my first dinner with acollege man.
I never was much for buying new clothes,
once I liked something it stayed with me for years.
I remember the day I tried
ironing your skirt,
so wide it seemed to go on and on
like a western sky.
Then I smelled the burning
and, crushed, saw that I had left a red-brown scorch
on that painting.
But you, Mother, you understood
because ironing was not your thing either.
And over the years your skirt became my skirt
until I left it and other parts of home with you.
Now you are eighty and I almost fifty.
We sit across from each other
in the prison visiting room.
Your soft gray-thin hair twirls into style.
I follow the lines on your face, paths lit by your eyes
until my gaze comes to rest
on the black and white,
on the years
that our skirt has endured.