in a huge fitting room
in a multi-leveled store, with scaffolding
for clothing racks. She is trying on a white dress.
I tell her I want one like it.
When the page of the dream turns into a mall, we pass a Disney store.
In the window, a display from Frozen, a snowman costume, white
except for an orange nose.
I say I want that too, try on the headpiece, discover
it’s made to fit my grandchild.
What is all this longing?
I think of a film I saw at an art museum in the city,
every actor on the silent screen a brown- or black-skinned prisoner
wearing white. Stark and blinding white like an LED glow against
the bones of winter trees. But wait I say. Why not go back to the dream
in the mall, in the store, in the dressing room
where the scaffolding has fallen by now and the dress is missing.
My daughter digs in the rubble, finds another one, this time white
with red buttons.
This dress will never do.
What I want is pure white, lace and cotton,
warm from the iron.
Once my dead mother came to the foot of my bed.
She was shrouded in white.
I followed her through the back of the closet
onto a dark wooded path
to a bridge only she could cross.
I reached out after her.
It was like reaching for the moon.
