The Communion of White Dresses

by Jaki Shelton Green

In my dreams, I am all the women in generations of white dresses white Sundays

that cover altars in all the hushed seams of white linen.

White gloves lift, pour, sift whispered prayers across crystal cups. Blood becomes bread.

I learn to lift white dresses over my head careful not to disturb the pleats that will soon

be crushed by hungry hands. What is the difference between standing, pouring blood

down the throats of phantom believers and kneeling before the parched lips of a nameless lover?

White dresses bear secrets in the neckline, along hem stitches. White dresses remember the

language of hands lifting, stretching, folding them into the froth of a cloud forest.

I am the shadow of all the white dresses hidden. I am the ghost of all the white dresses

remembering the stretch of a daughter’s shroud. The dance of another daughter’s wedding veil.

I am the tears that hold the needles steady while grandmothers stitch a Rapunzel of sky. I am

breath that is caught in the fragrance of a mother’s hair. White communion dresses wade in the

holiness of a forced faith that does not rhyme with my name. I become red fierce bloody ocean

swallowing a procession of white dresses at dawn. Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your hair.

Come dance in the cloud forest. Come dress the nymphs in your long silky strands. Come lift the

skirts of thirsty virgins. Stand beneath the altar to catch all the white dresses that they are casting

into the wind. My shoulders sigh under the reluctance of stiff coarse white dresses woven with

shards of prisms so tight the waist becomes a prison. I want to undress my Sunday body for slow

patient redressing of Saturday night black lace. Black sweat. A Black promise to erase this white

stain. White dresses become harsh smears. Confessional cages. White dresses on my skin remind

me of the unraveling of crows hiding in the elderberry tree. Hiding all things shiny. All things

unborn to a womb of ink. This is the tightness inside the throat of a white dress that pulls stitches

tighter. That threaten mutiny. I am the night walker in white. I am the song of the legend of the

woman in the white cloud forest who is known to eat the lace from her sleeves her collars her

buttons. White dresses become succor for a timeless famine. White dresses. White doves. White

stones. White crosses. White veils. I am the one chosen to commit. Conceal. Execute. Reveal.

Undress the sorcery. Betrayal. Acquisition. Acquittal. The dowry of white dresses.

The violence of white dresses….

Cover me tenderly.

See more poems from Jaki Shelton Green debuted on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Stillbirth,” and “For the lover who eats my poems…”

The Fight & The Fiddle