let a good thing be good.

i think falling in love is something you learn. step by step like sewing.  i know you're thinking that sewing is a random example but i'm the granddaughter of a talented seamstress, so it makes sense to me. anyway, falling in love can be a step by step thing. first, you pick out your material, then you cut your cloth and it can't be just any old cloth.  it has to be a cloth that makes you think of dandelions, smell rainbows and taste the morning's dew on your tongue when you touch it.  the cloth has to glide through your fingers like paint over michelangelo's palms.  that man couldn't be anything but a painter like your cloth can't be anything but yours. and then you cut the cloth into shapes that remind you of compassion, inspire you to be divine and forces you to recognize that wrinkles aren't only for humans.  this shape is the heart of the dress.  it is the life that the fashion borrows to walk down the street turning and breaking necks.  the shape that you cut so delicately is the foundation where you will build vessels for arms to hold others and room for legs that will wrap around occasions like tornadoes at sea. the foundation, the cut, the shape of the cloth lets you know where you're going.  i like my cloth dark to bring out the light in me i so often forget to turn on.  i like my material coarse to make me appreciate the smoothness of my skin as it hugs the slimness of my waist and the curve of my brown hips. i like my cloth to rest on my body like morality does on the tablets moses held.  hmm. i like my cloth snug enough to keep me warm but loose enough to let me wiggle out of my fears.  and i love when my cloth stops right above the knee because it leaves me some room to get down and pray comfortably about uncomfortable i am.  i also want my grandmother's knuckles etched into the fabric - the very strength of her lacing the seams with her grace and the hemline with her immortality.  i want to smell my grandmother in my cloth and keep our memories of green bananas, salty water and sugar cakes wrapped around my skin like silk.  i want to hear her humming at the neckline reminding my bust to be modest. i need my grandmother in my cloth like dumplings in my soup, i have to be full inside to have something to offer to the outside.  i need to see my grandmother's crows feet seep in the shape of my movement - her age battles with her wisdom to the drums of my heart beat.  i need my grandmother in my cloth so when i shape the arms i have something to hold on to.  and the arms will fall off my shoulders like the earth from mankind's sinful lips.  there is no space for worry on my exposed collarbone tattooed with the date of the fourth generation to inherit the royalty of the caribbean.  my cloth has dreams y'all, just like my love has dreams of falling, but step by step, i get to build a masterpiece with pillars of kisses and monuments of glances.  step by step, whether i gain my footing or whether i gain weight, we can make alterations to accommodate the space that no longer lives between us.  we can run the sewing machine over and over till the rhythm feels as natural as breathing.  step by step, we can bring the pieces together...together covering bruises named 'hickeys and last year's mistakes.' when we sew, you can look through the eye of my needle and funnel your way through me to do me.  step by step, i can let you pierce into me in the only way that makes me whole again.  i want you to be my cloth, laid on the table in your dark color and coarse terrain.  i want to wear you...out like security blankets and mothers to newborns.  i want you on me like perfume, step by step. i want you stained onto me like the paintings on the inside of michelangelo's eyelids.  you are my cloth, sewn into something beautiful, sewn together, step by step.

the original version.