The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Affidavit by Starr Davis

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I COME FROM

              after Tina Chang

I come from pants pockets, rolled socks, wired bra strap: the dusky places poor people hide their money. A crown royal bag full of quarters and pennies to put in collection plates on Sunday.

From double-dutch and deadbeats, an ashtray of cinders, an empty pill bottle. Every corner of juice saved in the carton as if we might need that slice of sugar on our tongues if a tornado hit.

As if, that gulp might give us strength, the way a hit gives my mother enough power to be a god, a mother, a warrior, a man, a piece of bread from her lips, if we ever go hungry. I come from that too, the indifference of food and drug, the

Crackling of a pipe or a joint, the smacking from lips and flesh. In the cheapest places, I learned people are the most expensive drug you could buy… I come from those cheap places: crack houses, corner stores, church. The ones that cry the loudest with tambourines beaten bloodied by sandpaper palms. I come from the crevasse between thumb and index finger, of the dryness collected there. I come from that succulent. From plastic plants, plastic furniture. From preserved pain, preserved love.

I come from the screech of a screen door, the chime of handcuffs, the flicks of fire. I remember the first time I sold my body. I was a pamphlet unfolded, only to be unfolded again. I come from that; worn pages of bibles no one reads.

The travailing of crows on wires. The aged chicken grease in cupboards. The sounds of a woman faking an orgasm. Or worse, faking her own death. In her own bed. The dim ceiling lights that turns us orange. Darkness. The oily water from my sisters’ bath. I come from that: Seconds.

Hand-me-downs. Thrifting through pantries, through boxes of toys at yard sales. I come from the reselling of things: slavery. My body is waiting for me, in a backroom somewhere at somebody cousin house,

maybe its interest has gone up. Maybe it grew wings. Got out. And maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it settled. And has become one of those slaves that falls in love with its master: bondage.

I come from that too.

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