The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: they/she/he: ritual to forget your (un)becoming by dezireé a. brown

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short film beneath a cloak of stars

Mrs.  Potato  Head  visits the  planetarium  alone  once her  husband  finally  goes on
vacation, grateful  for the  opportunity to  take her time  learning the  composition of
the  celestial  universe.  On  their last  trip, he  strolled  through  each exhibit  quickly
and pouted in the  cafeteria until she could stand it no longer. All she can  remember
is  the  big bang  theory and  pools of  dust and  ice  and  how  much her feet ached  in
those  emerald  heels  he  insisted  she  wear, but  not  this  time.  Today  Mrs.  Potato
Head tours  the  planets in  a mellow  ochre suit  and penny loafers bought for a  solo
vacation  that  never materialized.  A child  wails with  their hands  on the  surface of
Titan,  and she  gives a polite  smile to  the parent  reaching  out  with  yogurt  before
gazing upon Saturn’s rings. She considers her own body born out among those rings,
bits  of  asteroid and  mountain  swirling,  barely held together:  a body  not so  easily
identified.  But  Titan is  too close to  human life.  Humans are  obsessed with  seeing
their reflections in the glow of Saturn’s rotating eye.

Mrs. Potato Head slips into the gender neutral bathroom and removes the moustache
from her breast pocket. Presses it into place before she meets her own reflection
worlds away: her body a knot of wires, trailing electricity across the abyss above the
clouds. Mrs. Potato Head studies Luna and her scars, how the oceans mirror each
ragged breath, watches ten people stare into a telescope that spans the length of a
body twice her height. When she finally reads about dark matter, she can see herself
reunited with the stars, split among new constellations, fading in and out of opacity.
A blip of astral euphoria. In another world, her name would be Neptune and she
would dance with women on swathes of ice. Mrs. Potato Head isn’t sure how she
married a man who doesn’t appreciate museums, but she now knows she is a dwarf
planet on course to collide with the Sun. She rides the subway home with ancient
flight charts transposed on her wrists.

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