An Open Closet Poem by Tara Teeling

An open closet presents a conundrum.

There are the usual suspects:
dresses that have never been worn,
desperate, wallflower frocks
begging for a slow dance
or, the gowns which were worn once,
locked away and forgotten after
their maidenhood was spent,
hanging used, but not entirely dirty.

Then, there are the clothes
which were held in favour,
but had the audacity to shrink,
revolting suddenly, constricting and tightening
with a resolve reserved for a fortress with
heavy wooden doors and armed guards behind them:
you’re not getting in.

The best friends of the bunch,
are the ones which are the most familiar:
jeans, with weathered-white frays at the cuff,
smooth patches on each knee and
sweaters which possess no discernible shape,
flowering with tiny, fibrous balls
on the underarm or on the belly.
To discard these in favour of something
more colourful is enticing in theory,
but you hold on to them out of easy, needful habit.

Selection is about mood, but also foresight.
The combination you choose could be
the costume you wear when alerted
of unique drama, or when you encounter
a cat-eyed nemesis in the grocery store.
This could be the dress you wear when you
experience the insanity of instant love,
or the repeated stabs of disillusionment
upon news of a lover’s infidelity.
Is a floral pattern appropriate for despair,
or is it more about springtime and yellow light?

You tend to remember what you were wearing.

I wore brown when the car broke down,
the sassiest outfit in the closet,
sexy and powerful until the battery died.
Then, the outfit mocked me,
chortled as it smothered my skin in
the sweltering late-June heat..
I would have been better off in
something light and forgettable,
but I‘d dressed for earthy lust that day.

A long, green sweater when
I hit the dirt rolling, cracking my foot
after hurtling a weak-stemmed garden.
The November grass weaved through
my hair, leaving behind it’s dead while
laughter and bruises erupted in a riot of colour.
At least green on green would draw no further attention.

In a red blouse on the day I was dismissed,
which, I think, made me more of a target,
and a lemon yellow dress on a day when
I was meant to be seen and heard;
no one knew who I was, but in a good way.

In black when the phone rang,
telling me of a death without warning,
and I figured I’d been lucky to get it right for once,
so I wept with the fervour of
a professional mourner.

And nothing,
on the most prodigious occasions,
when crying, loving or solace
were the only objectives
and clothing would have
only gotten in the way.