How nearly can I  
inhabit someone  
else’s body? I don’t  
have any money.  
Prostrate, scrolling  
through other people’s  
clothes, I’m wearing  
the tearable pink dress 
I met you in. It came  
taped up in a box 
that smelled like house  
and once held water filters.  
These truncated mannequins  
I imagine angels appear as— 
headless torsos, voices  
emanating from necks— 
scare me like you did.  
Still I let divine will  
fill me like a windsock,  
commencing a delirious  
motion. Now my love is a line  
pulled by no current.  
Thanks for your purchase!  
wrote the woman in Queens 
on scalloped cardstock. 
Pulling her dress over  
my head, light sieved  
through sheer silk  
and I saw the threads  
binding my delight. 

Copyright © 2025 by Erin Marie Lynch. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 12, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.