A poem to try on for size

My fear dresses me
- a personal shopper
of second and
third-hand
clothes.
Choosing cuts and colours
that don’t complement but
contrast
my figure.

So what?

Can I take solace in what lies underneath: sometimes comforting; sometimes beautiful but
- more often than not -
unwanted and heavy
a suit of armour that fails to protect

(A leaden suit of flesh?)

I accessorize in scars, arm myself with burns and ink.
It makes the alien, recognizable;
not exactly me

but mine.

A catwalk of memories
I no longer fit - stained and frayed -
falling apart at the edges

but enough remains that I feel:
sometimes love; sometimes hope; sometimes pain.

But wearing pain is preferable to wearing nothing
and I have donned numbness for far too much of my life already.

I am told to dress young,
but youth never suited me - like a shirt and tie -
more like the black eye left behind by a lover too tired to pick up the pile
left on the floor