Plisse Shirt—Grandmother Size:1 70% Polyester Organza

70% Polyester Organza

and trimmed with lace ladder insets

awake at night

frozen in an India Ink drawing from a Ginza cafe

and the utilitarian hosing down of a child with a mother’s gentle rigor of economy

Plisse Shirt—Grandmother Size:1 70% Polyester OrganzaGrandmothers scrub their skin on bright and tiny plastic stools, spraying themselves down with peach hoses. Hair, puffed in a foam meringue, slinks mercurially into a limp, wet silk under a shower head. This bath house is thick with smeared echoes, ricocheting between tiles, mist, breasts, and soap. Other women soak clustered in a bubbling pool. One wears a damp towel as a hat and another is crying. Friends weave their arms in a flesh braid around