Women Playing Dress-Up

Oh, we’ve been wild
hilarious
stylish
extravagant and
strange.
All weekend, we reveled
in who we usually are Not.
I played a woman who throws
dinner parties and plates,
handles with aplomb
recipes gone wrong,
a woman who lives on wine
and crepes, who doesn’t need
much sleep or any solitude,
a woman who loves to shop for
new clothes and containers,
all kinds—vases, baskets, teapots—
things to hold the things this kind of woman drops—
earrings, cash, homemade chocolates, tiny jars of eye cream.
Oh, it has been a funny whirlwind of zesty woman costumes.
Now, welcome home to my own quiet self,
writing through the long winter days,
drowsily recalling all the weekend women we were.
And you? How are things there, inside,
where you really live?