What Would My Dress Be Made Of

“How I broke up with E” by Risha Nicole

You said you liked how precise I was with cloth, praised the way I hung and folded.

—Olivia Gatwood, “Life of the Party”

I have, many times throughout my life, been praised for how I have hung and folded.

When I, after many years, confronted my ex about how he forced himself upon me, he applauded my ability to save others. Covered me in clothing of praise: “if it wasn’t you, it would’ve been someone else.” Which makes me a hero for staying. A line of thought that is rooted in cause and effect. Cause—I stayed in an abusive relationship. Effect—other women throughout that time period did not fall victim to his abuse. I later explained this logic to him. He does not remember ever making this statement, and if he did make this statement, he assures me that I took it out of context.

Even my therapist, who has a habit of asking me “but if the sound of a doorknob rattling never became triggering, would you have ever started writing?” praises me for how I hung and folded. Praises me for how I am still here. Praises me for when I look at the bright side and admit that “as for writing, I suppose I might never have started.” I might have gotten straight A’s. Continued participating in clubs, hockey cheerleading. Met the love of my life at a tailgate like most of my friends did. We would be married by now, maybe even expecting. Perhaps I would’ve never picked up notebook and pen.

Modernist writer Else Hildegard Plötz, later known as Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was born on July 12th, 1874, in Swinemünde, Germany.

She refused to hang and fold. This, I admire.

Elsa lived her life as a poet, body performer, readymade artist, and punk icon. She moved to New York in 1913 where she was arrested on many occasions for self- expression—at least once for being “dressed in men’s clothes and puffing a cigarette.”

It is true that I can no longer remember what He Who Followed looks like. In my dreams he is often tall and broad. Has brown hair and is dressed in a men’s shirt—blue and red striped. His face looks like someone did a botched job of erasing pencil, leaving gray smears and eraser shavings along the page. This is to say, his face is illegible. I am not even sure if he owned a striped shirt.

One definition of trash is—

“that which is of low quality or worth
the souvenirs in the gift shop are nothing but trash” as in, the items we correlate to bad memories are trash. As in, if I owned a blue and red striped shirt, I would donate it. It would be trash to me.

Lately, I have been thinking about garbage in an obsessive way.

This summer I am moving, which in this case also means I am downsizing. Going through box after box of memories to keep, donate, or throw away. Throughout the process I have realized that I hold onto clothing in a sacred way. I treat items I’ve worn as scrapbooks—photos that help me recall where I was when I last felt this specific stitch against my bare skin. I have a pair of purple Victoria's Secret boy shorts—eight years old.

A present from an ex that I no longer wear, their elastic waistband reminding me of wet, sharp, ache. I can pick them up and feel their stretch—how they learned to give way. I can pick them up and remember how he looked as I unwrapped them.

Elsa’s readymade, Limbswish, consisted of garbage, as many of her readymades did. A found curtain tassel and metal spiral that she would wear against her hip to create music as she walked.

George Biddle, an American painter, described their first-time meeting as—

[Elsa] stood before me quite naked—or nearly so. Over the nipples of her breasts were two tin tomato cans, fastened with a green string about her back. Between the tomato cans hung a very small birdcage and within it a crestfallen canary. One arm was covered from wrist to shoulder with celluloid curtain rings, which later she admitted to have pilfered from a furniture display in Wanamaker's. She removed her hat, which had been tastefully but inconspicuously trimmed with gilded carrots, beets, and other vegetables. Her hair was close-cropped and dyed vermillion.

Figure 1

What many would consider to be trash, worn unapologetically. Tomato cans protruding, as they mock consumerism and female objectification—cans that cannot be hung like fabric to dry, cannot be folded.

What qualifies as garbage? Plastic straws, cans, fishing line, cigarette butts? The ticket stub from the first concert you went to together? Receipts? I turn to friends and ask, “what is one item that you associate with a bad relationship you experienced?”
I want to qualify their relationships too, with trash.

For me—it is the purple boy shorts, a camo jacket, a boho crop top. Possibly, a blue and red striped shirt. These items hold memories that make my skin crawl. Memories that make my mouth salivate with nausea. This dump site consists of items that have made me hang and fold.

For others—it is marshmallows, a map, cat food, a mixed CD, over-the-knee boots.

The first day of my freshman year of college was August 25th, 2015. It was a sunny Tuesday in Iowa, 77 degrees. “Cheerleader” by OMI was the number one song in America, and it was the day of my 18th birthday. I wore my favorite shirt to celebrate, a flowy boho-style crop top with bell sleeves trimmed in beige doily lace. The print of the shirt resembled a garden, engulfed in blush-pink flowers and greenery. I paired this top with my favorite pair of light-washed high-waisted shorts, a crocheted beige cardigan, and tan bejeweled sandals I had worn to prom months before. Unlike Elsa, this was my version of dressing to impress.

My favorite shirt was one that truly belonged to my little sister. Although we were four years apart, we often shared clothes in our closet. Revamping each other’s wardrobes when we grew tired of our own style and fighting when we realized we had gotten stains on a prized pair of pants or a hole in a favorite bralette. Once I moved into the dorms, we had to auction our wardrobes, deciding what would stay at Dad’s, and what would come with me, by who could out-talk the other. Eventually, everything was divvied up and packed into boxes. There are only three photos of me from this time period that I can find on my phone—

all have me in that boho shirt.

“We may, through our clothes, express what we would never voice either orally or in writing.”                   
-Marketta Luutonen, Handmade Memories.

The first article of clothing He Who Followed touched was the beige􏰊crocheted cardigan, hanging on the back of my chair.

A loud car, a cell phone, rhubarb-scented Mrs. Meyer’s hand soap, snow, hail.

We were encouraged to keep our dorm room doors open. “This is how you’ll make friends with floormates,” the RAs would say. He Who Followed came in through our open door. He was a student too. He Who Followed had only met me once prior. He Who Followed began to ask questions. He Who Followed is from Illinois. It is just him and his mother. He Who Followed has a friend back home named Ashley. I remind him of Ashley. He Who Followed began to poke at items. Picking up and pointing at various stuffed animals and purses. Asking if they were mine. He Who Followed made his way to my chair. Picked up the beige cardigan and sniffed, smelling vanilla perfume and my sweat from earlier that morning. His breath in was long. Low. Deep.

“Clothes and textiles play a special role in recalling the past due to the way they take an imprint of the body that wears them and are left marked by the ‘sweat and stains of everyday life.”
-Hunt, as cited in Signs of Wear: Encountering Memory in the Worn Materiality of a Museum Fashion Collection by Bethan Bide.

Elsa married three times, wedding dresses taking in the smell of her sweat. Throughout her life, her husbands and lovers were often her muses. For example, she made the readymade Enduring Ornament (1913), on the way to her third marriage. Finding a rusted metal ring that resembled a wedding ring, she took it to be a lovely sign, commemorating the beautiful day. This marriage was to Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven, a German-born Baron. She changed her name and from this moment forward she was called the Baroness by friends and family alike.

Figure 2

When my aunt Erica married into our family, she proudly ditched her maiden name. She took my uncle’s last name, becoming Erica Stegall. My cousins and I were all around the age of fifteen when they married. We would sit around the table with our soon-to-be aunt discussing names—

If she was taking our last name, if she should hyphenate her last name with ours, or if she should keep her maiden name. We learned that as a teenager, she never thought she would ever take someone’s last name, and then she met my uncle which complicated things—

This resulted in all of the cousins chirping, a chorus of girls swearing that they would never take a man’s last name. Erica’s response was simply “I know Anna won’t.” I’ve already decided that my wedding dress will be colorful and practical—a dress I will wear again and again and again. Sweat seeping into the fibers. Perhaps I’ll take my future betrothed’s last name as my middle name.

From that moment forward, I was Ashley to him.

Once he gave me that name, that’s who I was. To him, he knew who I reminded him of, and therefore that’s who I had to be.

Poor Ashley. He demanded to speak with her at any cost.

Soju, a Scrub Daddy sponge, sushi takeout, a WIFI router, movie theater popcorn.

Found items, once deemed trash, can be seen within the Baroness’s poetry, her artwork (God, 1917; Cathedral, 1918; Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1920), or her fashion and body performance. The Baroness, in true walking dada fashion, believed that every day in Greenwich Village should be treated as a performance. She’d use what day-to-day people would identify as trash as high fashion. She’d even amplify her own “female imperfections" alongside utilizing the found objects (trash) to highlight the humanness of the female body, instead of objectifying it. We can see an example of this in Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Shaving Her Pubic Hair.

Figure 3

When the stalking started, my hair began to revolt—

Strand by strand fell out during brushings and cleanings as if it knew my body was no longer a safe place to reside. My roommate began finding long strands of blonde hair in her shoes, her sheets, trapped between her laptop’s keys—she asked me to start brushing my hair over a trash can.

In the shower as I waited for the water to run cold, I would take every strand that fell out, cleaned with shampoo, and plaster it against the wall before I began drawing, swirling my finger—I painted mural after mural out of my hair before I mustered up the courage to leave my gallery walls and step into the restroom area where He Who Followed might be waiting. There were times when he was in the women’s bathroom, attentively waiting to say hi, and other times where relief washed over me. Either way, sometimes I forgot to clean up artwork made of hair which resulted in a floor-wide meeting over how to keep the showers clean.

I am sure by now I don’t have to tell you—there was never a floor-wide meeting informing residents about repercussions of stalking.

“You can throw it all away, but I found it's nice to have fabric. It stores memory in an accessible way.”      
-Lisa Taddeo, Animals.

I had a pink Target towel that I would wrap around my body after the shower, tucking the corner secure within itself, above my left breast. I was wearing this towel the first time He Who Followed waited for me in the women’s bathroom, as I stepped out of the shower. I wore Soffe shorts and oversized t-shirts to bed and woke every night to a rattle—him testing the doorknob to see if it wasn’t locked. The shaking of metal against wood became routine, a question to keep me up at night. I cannot tell you what I was changing into the night that he followed me after my shower. I can only guess an oversized t-shirt, possibly my father’s Metallica shirt, adorned with an old man’s face and paint or bleach marks from time. He opened my dorm room door, demanding to speak with Ashley as I was preparing to change into pajamas. Despite how precise I am with cloth, I cannot tell you if the towel looked hung or folded as it fell to the floor. I can just tell you how I pushed and screamed. How my roommate was facetiming her friends. How she came to help. How there were witnesses states away staring through a screen.

I find myself wondering if I should include the Baroness’s romantic abuse or if I should stick to discussing her father’s abuse, which on paper seems far less complicated. Although, abuse is often intricate—an ecosystem thriving on complex feelings that work in harmony, keeping the victim in place. Sometimes blurring the line between victim and abuser, prey and predator—who all witnessed the Baroness hitting William Carlos Williams? Did the red silhouette of her hand stain his cheek or was her hand balled into a fist? Fingers clenched so hard that it bore imprints from her nails into her palm. She hit him after an affair that Williams writes about in his autobiography, stating that she lived in disarray:

Ashes were deep on her miserable hearth. In the slum room where she lived with her two small dogs, I saw them at it on her dirty bed. But she herself at that moment was courtesy itself. We talked and that was all. We talked well and I was moved. But when later she went into her act, I put up a fight.

Abuse coming from both sides—verbal, physical. Rumors or facts spread to jeopardize public image. Whether true or not—I, on my worse days, have wanted to hit men for saying less.

FIgure 4

There are many things I could discuss when talking about He Who Followed—

The time I was kind to him. The times I blame myself. The times I saw him on campus. The time he watched me brush my teeth. The time he punched the elevator, denting it, because he couldn’t speak with Ashley. The time he followed another blonde mistaken for Ashley. Poor Ashley—

It’s been eight years, eight years, and these moments pile on top of me and squeeze tight. It’s been eight years and I find my hands becoming strained, damp, shaky as I try to type from under the embrace of this garbage—the memory of the boho crop top.

The Baroness’s mother, Ida Marie Kleist, was born November 27th, 1849, in Stargard, Germany. Ida “was sensitive and spiritual (fingebildet), a woman of ‘strange culture and beauty’” and this may be why the Baroness loved her so. Ida married Adolf Plötz (1872- 73) and together they had two children, Elsa and Charlotte. At twelve-years-old, Elsa began experimenting with different art forms, such as poetry. A common trope that we see within her writings and readymade artwork is the questioning of male authority figures being the head of the family. Adolf was a well-known mason, and as a child, Elsa found her father to be controlling towards her and her mother. Elsa once stated, “we are absolutely not used to caresses or much physical contact with my father—we were too scared of him.” How many years had these moments piled on her?

I cannot tell you what I was wearing when the university told me “this evidence is circumstantial. The process is long, difficult. You are the fourth woman to make this type of complaint against He Who Followed.”

How many times did the Baroness’s mother, Ida Marie Kleist, make complaints against her husband, Elsa’s father? How many complaints did Elsa make against him? Were there other women filing complaints of abuse? Dare I ask, four? More?

Hershey’s Kisses, a couch from Homemakers, alcohol, a cheese board, a printer.

“You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, where can I put it all down?”
-Anne Carson, The Glass Essay.

One night while writing about He Who Followed I found myself Googling things like rattling doorknobs in movie scenes or how to make a doorknob stop rattling. One of the results was a YouTube clip entitled “Top 10 Rattle Door Knob Sound Effect / Rattling Door Knobs Sounds / Sound Of Rattles / No Copyright” posted by Played N Faved - Sound Effects & Stock Footage. I began to play the video—

I was relieved when none of the rattles accurately represented the sound that would often repeat in my mind. Relief eventually turned into contemplation as I let my laptop screen lull itself into sleep. How can I accurately describe the sound in my head? The persistence? How it praises me? The black mirror of the screen displayed me in pink rimmed glasses, and a forest green youth pullover that I had purchased from a local thrift store, the tag still branded with “Ben,” the name of a previous owner.

“I feel like a name is something that you wear, and I wonder how you chose your name.” -Sheila Heti, while talking to Juliet Jacques, It’s This Mystery, Isn’t it?

I cannot tell you what I was wearing when I left the university and moved back into my father’s, the smell of defeat folded into every pair of jeans I owned—

I was sharing a closet with my sister again when I met He Who Forced.

It is important to note here that I was raised by a very loving father that emphasized how I shouldn’t hang and fold—

However, my family wasn’t free from abuse—despite best efforts from my parents, I know what a man’s clenched fists look like as he gets up out of bed, raising them upwards as a threat. How the light shining through the window can still backdrop him and appear as a halo as he commits this act.

The Baroness’s letters often alluded to her father’s abuse (my letters once alluded to abuse too. I sent texts throughout sleepless nights detailing the conflicting pain and love of domestic violence, my thumbs aching from thumping against screen. Did the Baroness’s fingers ache? Or were they callous? Will our hands ever know rest?). Her letters also often highlighted the effects on Ida and how affectionately the Baroness felt towards her mother.

“My mother was very sweet—amusing—gay even—when she had given up! She only was in privat[e] asylum of course—with “deranged nerves” well—that will it be with me also—nothing else! I Should say—They should BE deranged—How they kept straight through this time—I cannot quite tell.” -Excerpt of a letter from the Baroness to Pauline Turkle.

“Last night I dreamt a friend was cold; she’s not my mother but I wish she were, so gallantly I draped her with my coat. You know: My coat is unconditional.” -Lisa Cohen, Seams, Hems, Pleats, Darts.

I was wearing a jacket when I met He Who Forced—

A camo print zip-up from Goodwill. We met at a bonfire that his best friend invited me to, on a night that was too cold for fireflies. The jacket was oversized but fashionable and cinched in at the waist. My new favorite item of clothing—

The only thing I can remember about his outfit that night was how he styled his hair, loose with curls that swayed in the amber light to the sound of wood crackling in the heat—

He had started talking to me by making a joke about the army print, how he couldn’t see my arms because I blended in too well with the tree line. We spent the rest of the night laughing over red solo cups. I spent my time spitting hot takes about favorite books he had read, and he, a musician, spent his singing along to whatever song came on, quizzing me about the artists—

A couple weeks after we met, my car got a flat on the interstate. By then, snow covered the ground􏰌I was ill-prepared: me in my camo jacket, the cold wind slashing my cheeks, neck, hands, red. The lug nuts were rusted in place and wouldn’t budge as I jumped on the torque wrench. I called many people for help, all were busy with movies, work, or dinner plans. By the time I called He Who Forced I was desperate, and he was ecstatic to help. He was my knight in shining armor who saved me with the assistance of Coca- Cola, which he swore would eat away the rust. Whether the Coke did the trick or not, a couple weeks after that, we were boyfriend and girlfriend.

I’m sure Ida’s husband was lovely when she first met him.

Offering help at her slightest call.

An Ice Cream Sundae from Fiss, Aeropress coffee maker, golf clubs, red car, anything with the number 47.

It was the abuse that Ida received from her husband that the Baroness believed drove her mother “mad.” After suicide attempts and running away from family, Ida was sent to the Fraudendorf Sanatorium in Stettin. It was in this sanatorium that Ida began experimenting with textiles, sewing found trash in with cloth. The Baroness reflects on this time through stating “she began to make strange ‘handiwork’ (when she had been such [a] ‘skilled worker’ in fine embroidery— needlework!!) Now— she did things— nobody would think of putting together— spoiling elegant material with cheap trash— she was tired of doing fine handiwork.” The abuse, domestic violence, is what the Baroness believes led Ida to create found art. As we know, eventually the Baroness would follow suit, possibly in homage to her mother.

Ida passed away from uterine cancer on February 26th, 1893.

Figure 5

“But still had I to sit in ashes—go to my mothers grave-tree for garment to dance in. Now I wear the third robe of brilliancy.” Excerpt of a letter from the Baroness to Robert McAlmon.

I wish I could say more about Ida. What we know is that she lived, she married, she gave birth (she was creative), she was abused by her husband (she began experimenting with art, sewing in trash with textile), she suffered from mental and physical health concerns and was institutionalized, she died (It is the information within the parenthesis, who she was, that I wish I knew more about. It makes me scared for my own life, to be equated to marriage, birth, and death. I breathe in and I’m nervous that this interest is selfish of me, to equate her sad and beautiful story to mine. [Reach out reader, I beg of you. Touch the page. Comfort me and yourself. I know, I know.] I exhale and I want every woman’s life to be more.)

I wish I could say more about my own mother. What you know is that she lives, she married, she gave birth (there were types of abuse in her story as well. Abuse too complicated. Abuse from both sides. Abuse not meant for this story. Abuse that she documented—photos that she cut and glued into a scrapbook much like how I cut and paste this story. Abuse not meant to be told by me, yet.), she divorced.

Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV) is defined by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence as “any unwanted sexual contact or activity by an intimate partner with the purpose of controlling an individual through fear, threats or violence.”

“My mother left me her heritage...left me to fight.” -the Baroness.

One night he surprised me with canvases. Watercolors of every shade and a bottle of wine. We took turns, adding blobs of color here and there, leaving no section of white unscathed. During breaks we drank from the same cup, using the pads of our paint- ridden thumbs to wipe dribbles off of chins, our faces becoming palettes of violet and canola hues. We laughed and danced, ending up with hideous, muddled messes. Canvases that could never see the light of day.

We would lie in bed, surrounded by disheveled sheets as I would rub his back. I would use my thumb to trace circles around moles, playing an extravagant game of connect- the-dots, and would think about how we must look like a Renaissance painting, blushed and dewed, surrounded by clouds and ribbons of soft linen. While my fingers traced, if I began thinking about when I asked, “can we at least use lube,” and how he responded, “a real pussy doesn’t need lube,” I’d again—

hang and fold. My back would begin to spasm. My uvula would swell. Air would no longer reach the bottom of my lungs. No—

I didn’t think of that. I thought of how beautiful we must’ve looked, lying in each other’s arms.

Single-stitch vintage t-shirts, used Kleenex, a yellow couch, a wooden dresser, dumbbells.

He would buy me clothes. A Nike workout set that I still have. Those purple Victoria’s Secret boy shorts. Gifted to me on my birthday. He said, “I got you these because they looked comfy.” It was the first time (only time) a romantic partner had gifted me undergarments for comfort and not for the pleasure of looking at—

He would also gift me flowers. I would come home after work—after ripping, tearing, bleeding, the night before—and rose petals would adorn the floor. They would lead me from doorway to the bedroom as an apology. Although, flowers meant he expected a thank you, as in, I was forced again, and again, and again—

I saved a single rose from every bouquet I received and would hang them upside-down to dry, willing them to last. It wasn’t until I moved two years ago, that I threw the shriveled bouquet away.

It wasn’t until I began to write this lyric essay that I threw the boy shorts away.

“Please describe your emotions.

I went out last night in New York to meet all my friends looking like this—tears and bra and all.” -Sheila Heti, Survey Answered with Phrases from My Diary.

I often find myself wondering about how Ida’s creations must have looked. Sewing trash in with fabric. Was the trash old and discarded, found on the street? Or was it sentimental trash, thrown out after years of safe keeping? The Baroness would stick stamps on her face. Was this in homage to her “driven mad” mother? Did Ida sew in used postage stamps? Or a receipt for the day’s groceries? If I were to sew trash into my clothing, the trash would mean something—

I’d sew the straws from my tequila sours into a harness. Straws from the bar on New Year’s Eve where a man unprovokedly grazed my ass. When confronted, the man said he wouldn’t have grazed my ass. “Her ass? Oh no, I’m the manager of a local sushi restaurant. I would never.” The abuse from men piles, and piles, and piles—

Perhaps Ida sewed in items that reminded her of bad memories—perhaps trash from her husband’s abuse—an act to reclaim.

Jim Morrison’s book, a bad front tooth, balloons, stuffed bunnies, a Moby CD.

I learned how to (fake an) orgasm.
Orgasming—as in—performance art—as in—survival.

Did the Baroness learn this body performance? Maybe when she learned William Carlos Williams didn’t enjoy her body odor or the pressure of her lips when they kissed? Did Ida learn this performance? Would this abuse be found in the trashed items either woman used?

He threatened me once, balling his fists and raising them upwards as he yelled, “say that again,” with something close to a blank stare in his eyes. I had told him that I didn’t enjoy when he tried to pleasure me orally. His tongue moving in ways that incited numbness as he worked to hold me down (he liked when I would pretend to move in ecstasy). I began crying. As Heather Christle explains in The Crying Book, “they say perhaps we cry when language fails, when words can no longer adequately convey our hurt. When my crying is not wordless enough I beat my head with fists.” I rocked myself back and forth. Murmuring a phrase that in this relationship would often bless my lips, “I want to shove my head through a wall.” He took me to hibachi that night. I decided to dress nice. Slipped into a sun dress covered in sunflowers and a canola yellow sweater. It was my first night ever going to hibachi. I loved watching as the chef soaked the stovetop in oil, everything going up in flames.

“I never burned my bra in the sixties. But I wish I had.” -Lindsy Van Gelder, The Truth About Bra-Burners.

We can see the trash that the Baroness used while paying homage to her mother. We can see the answers, the trash that correlates with other’s bad relationships. We can guess at what trash Ida may have used. But what would my dress be made out of? This is the question that I’ve been dancing around this entire lyric. I believe you, reader, might already know the answer. If I’m being true to myself, and you, the dress would be made of the flowery boho crop top, the pink towel, the camo jacket, purple boy shorts— These are the items in my life that hold bad omens. I see these things and immediately turn the other direction, begin to feel their fingers clawing my throat shut. One day I will wear this dress as an act of survival, throwing away these memories, these items that reek of sewage, and revamp them until I can twirl, sway, and feel how their fabric feels against my legs. I will sew me in, crochet me in, lace me in.

Figure 6

Swedish Fish, snowboards, a ring bearing a dragon, Adidas Sweatshirts, clogs.
All of these items, now trash, make up our clothing. They are woven into every stitch.

Worn scrapbooks of maps, marshmallows, cheese boards. Hand soap embroidered with string, mixed CDs scratched into iridescent sequence that dance as we sweep, sauté, brush through ache. Seatbelts of loud cars wrapped as scarves, giving us the most beautiful of silhouettes.

The Baroness passed away December 14th, 1927, from gas asphyxiation, next to her beloved dog, Pinky. She passed away silently, unlike the performances her day-to-day life had been. This led friends, and myself, to wonder if her death was on accident, with intent, or even maliciously conducted by a jilted lover. Performance art doesn’t always result in survival.

It has been six years since I left He Who Forced for good—

I traveled far away to be safe while I did it. He received a phone call from a different continent—to say he was a jilted lover would be an understatement—

My sister and I shared a closet, and have stopped sharing a closet, since. I have kept my clothing in pristine condition, memories smoothed out with fabric softener—stain removers never used—a life hung on a clothesline to dry and fold—

My current favorite item of clothing is a Budweiser T-shirt with I love you man splayed on the front. This shirt originally belonged to my father, a gift from the 90’s. I was wearing this shirt over this past weekend as I drove back into the states from Nelson, British Columbia. As I passed the border, the border patrol agent asked for my passport and then asked for my license, saying, you look like you’ve lost some weight, but the eyes, the eyes never change. I did as most women are taught to do when someone comments on their body, which is, I giggled politely and said it’s a good feeling when someone notices you’ve lost weight.

On the drive home I watched the pines slide into one after another, after another, and thought about what I truly should’ve said, Oh that old photo?! I snapped that shot at a local Walgreens, I had been talking to my therapist about leaving my then-boyfriend and I had decided to do it when I was overseas, traveling, to be safe, you see, I was scared, the therapist didn’t know everything, so she was doing a fine job, but I was gaining weight, I was stressed, eye twitches and all, it felt like my body was shutting down on itself, I was scared of many things, myself being one of them, my body being another, so I left in multiple ways, and then when I came back, I drank, and drank, (you’ll think I’m crazy when I say this, but El Bait Shop had the best margaritas in town) and drank, to regain agency of my own body, as one does, thus, Cassandra was born, which was the name I’d give to people who hit on me at the bars as I healed, I was messy, and I threw up, blacked out, danced till I was falling over, it was fun, it was sad, I lost weight, there were times where I was a real Bitch, there were times when I was the life of the party, there were times when I bared my teeth and cried with a chorus of women on the bathroom floor, should I have done differently? possibly, but I learned how it felt to whisper to friends at a sticky bar rail about being followed, about being forced upon, how it felt to say yes to a drink, to say no, to soberly say I like that, keep doing just that, and mean it, to give my body agency after years of it being stripped away, not forced, I am here, I can say that life feels real, and mean it, I am here, I haven’t healed completely but I have, healed. My jaw clenched, tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, as I remembered those many, many nights. Now, eyes fixed on asphalt, more asphalt, and the pines, of course I lost weight.

Greta Gerwig told Emily Spivack in Worn Stories about a time she had been in love. One of her first true loves—she was 18, he was 26 and “had this very soft button-down shirt.” When he left, he left Gerwig the shirt. She often writes in this shirt and observes:

when you write, it’s good to have a secret because in a way you do. You have to nurture the secret until other people know about it. Maybe wearing this shirt connects me with a part of my younger self that was incredibly emotional and vivid, and those feelings, combined with that sense of having a secret, is how I like to feel when I write.

I write this lyric in our shirt, reader. Our shirt, not mine alone, a corset made of so many items that hold bad memories (as we see now, in many cases, possibly memories of abuse). From Kleenex to dumbbells, clogs to balloons, this once elegant fabric is now sewn with cheap trash. Items that secretly hold trauma within them, in hopes of taking back agency. In this shirt we will not hang and fold.

As the Baroness once said about her own mother’s work, what “strange handiwork” indeed.

Figure 7

References

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Figure 2: Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa. Enduring Ornament. 1913, private collection.

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About the Author

Annastacia Stegall is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa. She has a passion for blending poetry and creative nonfiction with various hybrid forms of artistic expression like sewing and collage. Her work often explores themes of domestic violence, girlhood, and community. Instagram: anna_stegall

about the artist

Risha Nicole is a poet, author, award-winning teaching artist, and Pushcart Prize Nominee from Sandusky, Ohio. Risha is the author of the full-length poetry collection Without A Sound and her chapbook “As Long as I Live You are with Me.” Their upcoming third poetry collection entitled, Dying Girl is about coming of age and explores religion, mental health, sexual abuse, and queer identity. Risha’s poetry has appeared in the Gordon Square Review, New Words {Press}, New Delta Review, and Kent State University Press.