Put on a clean shirt <br />before you die, some Russian said. <br />Nothing with drool, please, <br />no egg spots, no blood, <br />no sweat, no sperm. <br />You want me clean, God, <br />so I'll try to comply. <br /> <br />The hat I was married in, <br />will it do? <br />White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny array. <br />It's old-fashioned, as stylish as a bedbug, <br />but is suits to die in something nostalgic. <br /> <br />And I'll take <br />my painting shirt <br />washed over and over of course <br />spotted with every yellow kitchen I've painted. <br />God, you don't mind if I bring all my kitchens? <br />They hold the family laughter and the soup. <br /> <br />For a bra <br />(need we mention it?) , <br />the padded black one that my lover demeaned <br />when I took it off. <br />He said, 'Where'd it all go? ' <br /> <br />And I'll take <br />the maternity skirt of my ninth month, <br />a window for the love-belly <br />that let each baby pop out like and apple, <br />the water breaking in the restaurant, <br />making a noisy house I'd like to die in. <br /> <br />For underpants I'll pick white cotton, <br />the briefs of my childhood, <br />for it was my mother's dictum <br />that nice girls wore only white cotton. <br />If my mother had lived to see it <br />she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office <br />for the black, the red, the blue I've worn. <br />Still, it would be perfectly fine with me <br />to die like a nice girl <br />smelling of Clorox and Duz. <br />Being sixteen-in-the-pants <br />I would die full of questions.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/clothes-2/
