Taking Off Edie Sedgwick’s Clothes

First, her earrings shaped like chandeliers,
unclasping one by one and
placed within her ivory jewellery box.

And her black beret,
pulling static from her hair.

Then her long cotton leotard, a more timely matter,
as her dark sleeves inched off her shoulders,
tugging the supple cloth down her thighs
until it sat in a clumsy pool beneath her feet,
while my fingers lingered at her toes.

You will want to know
that she was leaning against a factory wall,
smoking, with a child-like grin,
counting the cold tiles on the floor,
kicking the cotton leotard from her body.

The satin feel of a woman’s pair of stockings,
is something to be savoured,
and I proceeded in perverse expectation,
peeling layers from her hips, her legs, and her pink ankles,
unwrapping the shell from her body,
until I finally reached her.

Later, I wrote in a notebook,
that she was like a Rock’n’Roll Goddess,
but of course, I cannot tell you everything –
the way her breath stunk from cigarettes,
how her words spilled like asphalt
every time we spoke.

All I can tell you is
that the fake city
lights shone through the window
and made her skin a translucent shade of green,
so when I tried to see her body,
naked as she was,
all I had was the outline of her neon silhouette,
her white bones,
and her still face,
like kissing a cold statue.