Reliquaries
I recently went shopping with my mother for a slip. We went to the second floor of a popular department store only to find that traditional slips have been replaced with figure-altering shapewear. We searched among plentiful racks of cinching, smoothing, taming, and trimming spandex undergarments only to find one lone, black, classic half-slip in the wrong size. Disappointed, she looked around the ladies’ lingerie department and stated, “When I was eighteen, all these things were kept below the counter, not out in the open, for everyone to see.” We left without a purchase and ate lunch, during which I pondered the years of struggling to fit into clothes, to adjust and correct my body’s form, to align with a size and shape that was deemed acceptable. On the ride home in the car, the clouds were striking in their forms. She said to me, “Do you ever look at the clouds and try to see things in them?” In Reliquary for a Day of Slip Shopping, I juxtaposed her comment and question with a miniature paper slip floating amidst clouds.