The Only Thing I Learned from Working at an Italian Restaurant for that One Week When I was Eighteen Was
       

how to tie a tie, which I didn't realize I still know
how to do until I slipped from the closethook

a wide wool one in smoked-cigar brown
with crop-in-hand jockeys-

riding-thoroughbreds violently
embroidered in electric orange and yellow

and blue and began the over-under
muscular guesswork of a half-practiced

drill until I had a passable knot
at my throat and a mostly straight

hang, except for its lay
on my tits. Yesterday I found a single

black hair between them, in the space
we call cleavage. To cleave means two

things, near opposites: to follow
wholly or to halve, a word I can hardly say

differently than have. I have two
hairs under my left nipple, recent

acquisitions, and another that's sprouted
from the benign mole on my cheek,

which I call fondly my hag
hair. For seven years in a row

I went as a witch for Halloween
and relished the putty my mother

thumbed to affect a wart on my nose
before she painted my whole face

green. There's beauty in unfemming,
darlings. The world seams

when I put on one of my dead
grandfather's shirts and button up with a different

hand than I'm used to. Sometimes I sit around
in my strap-on because it's so fucking

cute: blue at the base with a wedding band
of lavender, a pink pink head. Just now, out

the corner of my eye, I catch my reflection.
Maybe see the mirror blushing.

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Copyright © 2019 Emilia Phillips All rights reserved
from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission