​What I Want, by Sally Anderson Boström

Portrait of a Young Woman in White, by Anonymous Artist (France?) 1798

​What I Want
 
I want you 
to see me in that white dress 
I bought in a thrift store after our first meeting. 
Our first meeting. And I held that dress 
and thought your name, so I bought it. 
 
I want to be coming 
down the stairs at your mountain cottage,
wearing only that, a nightgown in the morning. 
 
I want there to be wood and morning light,
and I want you to be there, only you, 
making me tea in that pot we shared once. 
 
I don’t want anyone else to see me. 
 
I want you to watch the way my breasts are still firm, 
to think how easy it would be to slip a strap from my shoulder.
I want to be standing, looking out the window drinking my tea 
and then, when I’m halfway through the first good moment of the day, 
I want you to slip the right strap down.
I want you to kiss my neck, my shoulder,
and as I turn around, placing my half-finished tea on the table, 
I want you to slip the left strap down too.
 
And I want to feel it, your face on my breasts. 
I want to feel that smart mouth on my sternum, 
I want to feel you sigh into me
as the dress slips to the floor. 
 
Yeah, that’s what I want. 
 
And you can carry me, 
if that’s what you want, 
carry me upstairs, but 
not to the bed you share with your wife,
to that small bedroom in the corner with a view of the creek. 
Yeah, you can lay me down there with my white dress, 
the one I bought in a thrift store, still on the floor downstairs. 

Sally Anderson Boström

This poem was inspired by the painting Come Around by Kevin Foote. Click link below to view it.
 https://www.instagram.com/p/DH1-xdjttEt/ 

Sally Anderson Boström is a poet, literary scholar, and translator from California, now based in the Czech Republic. Her work explores vision loss, intimacy, and the afterlives of history. Her poems and essays have appeared in Fence, Ms. Magazine, Literary Mama, Elm Leaves Journal, and elsewhere.