The Thieving Slut

The Thieving Slut

who said

you could wear my things

because I certainly didn’t

maybe

if you had asked me

I might have consented 

but to take it on yourself

to figure I wouldn’t mind

is going too far

if you get my drift

you don’t want my grubby hands

all over your things

you’ve told me that often enough 

well I don’t want my clothes 

all over your slutty body

you heard me right

you thieving slut

that it looks better on you

than it ever did on me

is not justification 

it’s mine

now take it off right now

give it back to me

I don’t care who sees you here

the people in this mall

have seen uglier sights

than your skinny ass

so give me back my clothes

give me back my dignity

my privacy

my right to have something 

of my own

what did I do

to deserve a parent like you

Sometimes these poems are so obvious I don’t think they much explanation. I was older than my siblings & there was no way my clothes would fit them for many years so this scenario never happened to me. I’ve seen it in episodes of lots of sitcoms. You can almost hear this on the Brady Bunch.

I did get some of my dad’s hand-me-downs though. In fact I still have a leather jacket of his I sometimes wear. I also wore the hell out of a cream-coloured car coat of my mothers. My Dad had bought matching coats for him & her. Her’s wasn’t tailored quite right, maybe the buttons were on the wrong side, but it fit me perfectly. I wonder what became of that coat?

In writing this I didn’t want to mention an article of clothing to give your imagination room to play. I also wanted to make this gender free – how many of you thought it was females? Names of clothes tend to be gendered – blouse vs. shirt; panties vs. underwear. I know ‘slut’ tends toward female – is there a male equivalent? Nowadays it is applied to both male & female.

The title came well after the piece was written. It is a play on the name of a famous opera The Thieving Magpie by Rossini. Also magpie’s are noted for taking shiny objects and are one of only a few non-mammal species able to recognize itself in a mirror test. Which is appropriate for a clothing thief.