It is not a skirt

It is Paris
a plastic bag
cavorting with the breeze
in that famous movie
it is swishiness
and Audrey Hepburn
it is a mermaid’s tail
a Rothko
a secret
a fashion shoot
sand dunes
seen from a plane
so they look like ripples
on a white hot sea.

It is not a skirt.

It is a thousand threads
winding me back
to my younger self
when an outfit was armor
fending off
the hungry mouth
of ordinary.