This is my dress. There are many like it but this one is mine. (The Dresswomans Creed)

If you asked me what my favorite colors are... Teal. Bright teal. And black. That's it.

But when Baby Cait was just a baby Cait, I was in love with the color red. My dream car was "a hot hot hot hot hot red convertible." And I loved this color so much I projected it on others. I used to tell people my dog's favorite color was red. She had a middle name and her own wardrobe- she could HAVE a favorite color. Also I used to eat peanut butter and jelly sammiches every day, but now can't even stand the smell of them. Maybe we just get burnt out on things, I don't know. But sometimes, I still need red. (Especially Red, the Taylor Swift album)*

I've never stopped loving red lipstick, and anything I can wear with it. So I'll throw on red accents. Anything with red in the pattern. I will mix. I will match. (Kind of.) 

I will glam it up a la 1940s and 50s. Anytime. Since forever ago until flying cars are a thing (still waiting on that one, science guys.) 

Clothes. Let's talk about how clothes are like life, because that's where my mind always goes. Into a metaphor. I can't even talk about a goddam dress, because I'm deep in the trenches of this rabbit hole right now. Maybe clothes aren't life, but clothes are people: 

And some clothes you outgrow. 

And some clothes are beautiful, but one day you look at them in the mirror and think, "this isn't me". 

Some clothes you just don't love. Even though you so badly wanted to.

And some clothes, you just lose on accident. 

But then there are old clothes. 

The ones you've had forever. Not new, or trendy. But worn-in just right. Simple, and real. Not fancy. Maybe it even gets thrown on the floor and forgotten about sometimes. Something so normal and second-nature that it lasts. 

This cherry dress is faded from being washed so much, from being loved so hard. Sometimes the zipper sticks. No dress is perfect. Some dresses you buy at Goodwill when you're a too-skinny teenager, and keep wearing every year, the dress trying to tell you its okay to have big boobs and a midsection that looks like it actually contains internal organs. 

Anyway,

This is my dress. I didn't wear it for a while. Because I forgot about it, or I thought it wouldn't fit. Or I had new clothes and didn't feel like I needed it. But I love it.

That's all I want for anyone. A vintage, classic love. That gets old, but doesn't get old. That grows old, but never gets boring. That even if the shine wears off, its comfortable. Beautiful. Real. Personal.

That should always be en vogue.

*not a joke

Change Your Life, Clean Your Room

I used to be able to do this: to wake up in the morning and have the power
To affirm, this is what is going to happen today
And who knows what will happen tonight
Because with ghastly pallor I used to connect the bones
Of collage-glued laughter, the after-life of the after-party or happy
To spend the night on the couch with a steak-flavored Sagittarius
Whose hair was a book I couldn't read, whose spine I would crack eventually

But this was before doctors and long-term fixes
Before health and stability killed the genies that used to
Trip over themselves to grant my death wishes

Now I've got a cassette tape on the table telling me I've got it all
Wrong, and a mirror I just cleaned telling me I am one-dimensional
Trapped inside of the mirror is a girl in a bow and a smock
Telling me seeing is believing

And I believe in God, but I've always been an atheist
When it comes to my own fucking body

My skin is still the softest pillow the United States has ever rested on
But my black coffee heart is the one reading the sheet music
To the pianist who lives in the pair of skinny arms that the masses want to steal

When I say I'm homesick I only mean I haven't been to the spa
Or to the hospital all year, I've been trying
To dance myself clean to the beat of my own ear drum
But I miss when mornings were quiet, and certain
And there are days when I am sure I would be happy
To be a hermit with a mailbox and a coffee pot

Still when someone says he or she eats their salad last
I say oh, how very French of you