• Antonia Pont

 

Preferably do not overdress it

(check the tone of your destination).

If it is a long-stanza’d number

let the fabric move with your body as you move.

If it is more a kind of undergarment—

intimated meanings layered with litotes or allusion—

then couple it perhaps with something almost staid

or at least reserved. If it is flamboyant

then splash the colour about, indulge your sense of fantasy,

make it spin and flash

like the costume jewellery it is brave enough

to declare itself to be. And if it is a talisman—

discrete, lived and reflecting the unsaid when held to the light—

then wear it quietly like a precious thing that although small

holds worlds and steeps its wearer in solace,

pulling the unseen veil of weight

that was holding the form in a slight distortion,

aside and away. Wearing just such a charm,

no other adornments are necessary.