I tripped on a forest of roots & lost my clothes.
When this happened, I felt less a lady
in shame of uncovering from pink, frilly things

the shelter like feathers on a peacock or
ribbons track-marking a braid –

I was enclosed in such a house that I must have
become it myself. ****, I saw tiger-stripes
eating their way from my hips to bottom
and made a big taproot, a radix to the physical

me, as rosy as a flower in the dead of spring
even billowing as petals will for wedding vows –
the single, womanly cavity I concealed

how together we became such a dollhouse
for nature and its ***** hair:
I, taught to play with my own frilly, pink thing.