Originally published on Slackjaw (Oct. 2019) 

T’was like a minor miracle!

Cinched waist of Wasps decreed — -

in simplest black, thick straps adorned

and molded cups; no cover up,

Indeed!

— — Emily Dickinson

All the being and the doing, all the expansive floral patterning, the sucking in and letting go, the expanses and glances of pale paper skin, the sense of solemnity, the wedge-shaped core of darkness, being both invisible to others and fiercely obvious. This will do and this must do … having shed my own attachments am now free for the strangest adventures on the lake.

— — Virginia Woolf

Seven years would be insufficient to make some of us decide and seven seconds are more than enough for others. I knew in a single heartbeat my destiny was boy shorts.

— — Jane Austen

There’s a certain kind of feeling that polka dots bring forth into your being. It is both the jubilation and the certainty flowing over you that you have said the thing that must be said with this choice design. It is a multitude of circles. Do you really want polka dots rising and falling and dancing all over your one and singular body? Will you love the dots as much when the sun’s shining overhead and just as much when the clouds arrive to cover the sun?

— — Toni Morrison

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. I invite you, therefore, to the creature which is my two-piece; the green halter top borrowed from my friend Lord Byron last spring and the purplish camo thong I found at the bottom of a lonely pond. Thus strangely is this suit constructed.

— — Mary Shelley

The pool party was in reality, a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. By this I mean, I was struck to silence at the sight of Mrs. Oliver in a navy one piece with belt of golden buttons, the very same such as my own. I was led to believe that my garment was of an exclusive nature. I could do nothing else but smile and wrap myself in a La Coste beach towel and pretend I cared about the charring of Impossible burgers at the bar-b-que.

— — Edith Wharton

Even more, I had never meant to love this white unlined tankini. One thing I truly knew — knew it in the edge of my left clavicle, in the center of my solar plexus, knew deep in my coccyx — was how it had the power to either break me or allow me to soar from the edge of the diving board into the deep blue-green of the high school pool before Edward caught sight of my exposed nipple.

— — Stephenie Meyer

We looked at the world in the blank gaps between our thighs (or were they two hot dogs?) and at the edges of our underwire. It gave us sunburns on our backs. Dripping water wears away a stone and it also drags the seat of your swimsuit well below your butt cheeks. Remember, my child, as well, that razor burn at the bikini line is real.

— — Margaret Atwood