The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Mid-Year Best Best Dressed

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This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 5 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed so far this year.

IN OHIO

My mother is asleep by six o’clock every evening
          although on her taxes she still checks single never married.
Most of her relationships have been ten years or more
          She falls asleep with dark cognac warm on her lips.
No man to worry about; no children to listen out for
          She has always worked on assembly.
The same thing every day is a safe life
          Love never guarantees such a luxury.
She opts out; she works to stay safe out the way
          Her work clothes are draped across a chair.
A fresh coffee filter sits readily near the pot
          She takes her coffee black.
Calls me fancy for adding almond milk and sugar to mine—
          All her daughters are grown with homes of their own, she says.
As a proud accomplishment
          None of us were teenage mothers.
We went to school
          Sometimes to church.
Motherhood is a war she won
          We knew how to lock the doors and windows.
We knew how to tell men at the gas station to fuck off
           We knew how to earn a living by eighteen.
We knew why we had to leave by eighteen—
           At some point, they called us lucky.
And maybe I felt lucky for a while
           I made it without a father, I say this to strangers.
As a proud accomplishment
          When my daughter is born, and I am grown enough
To be a mother
           I fall asleep when the city is useless.
When all the bars and clubs close down nearing the witching hours—
           Times I used to sneak back into the house.
Back when I wasn’t grown, and my mother had children
          Wild, loose girls to listen out for.

Daughters she would curse for coming in late
          Daughters she raised to know better.
Daughters she raised to be grown enough



          To tell men at the gas station to fuck off.
Daughters she raised like sons—
          And when I close my eyes, I see the man.
Dark and toxic like the one my mother drinks alone.
          A man who bought me a drink one night.
In exchange for a baby by morning
          I can see him standing in a courtroom of shadows.
Telling a judge I am no mother to his child
          I am a wild, loose girl from Ohio on the run.
With a baby that is his
          I am unwed, alone.
My last year’s taxes I check, single never married
          Emotionally unstable—or does he call me dangerous?
Is there a difference?
          I leave Texas fleetingly like I had been gone
On a bad date     all night

          My mother is asleep when my plane lands.
At the only airport in town—my baby
          is tied to my chest like a pacemaker.
The day before I laid my clothes out
          like the first day of school.
I sit an empty coffee mug by the machine.
          My important documents: the ones that say I am human woman.
Naming the generation that has come from my body and is legally mine
          I worry about the man sleeping next to me.
The child who binds us for the next 18 years to life
          is asleep across the room in her bassinet.
She is soon to become fatherless in hours
          soon to be the daughter my mother taught me to be.
The one I vow to teach to know better
          To tell men at the gas station to fuck off.
Maybe not verbally—but just with her eyes
          That morning, I drink my coffee black.
I am no longer fancy with a baby
           I put on leggings and a t-shirt.
A jacket because I am always in winter
          Someone tells me the best way to leave an abuser—
Is like a burglar, jumping inside a getaway cloud
          The sun is out the day I take off.
Nearing the hour



          My mother probably takes her lunch break.
I run into the hot sun bright like death
          I wake up on the other side of myself.
The girl from Ohio I left behind some time ago
          I call my mother at the airport.
Knowing better than to knock at her door at this hour when
          Only women who aren’t real women are outside.
She does not answer the phone when I call—
          No man to worry about; no child to listen out for.

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