She wore gloves,
long, cotton swan's necks
which she stole from the
fields outside Baltimore,
plucked from the brown
fingers that wore the soil to dust.

She wore gloves,
a white pretense of elegance,
to hide her dainty,
fingers of a lady
who had never labored a day in her life.
Or so he supposed.

She wore gloves,
he'd soon discover,
to masque the bleeding
from nights spent battling
a linguistic war
with her old typewriter.

She wore gloves,
white lies that they were,
to protect her only valuables
from being taken from her
or doomed to the fate
of being held in another's.

She wore gloves,
never took them off,
as her one and only disguise.
For who would publish
lofty, luxurious paragraphs
when tainted by the pronoun her?