Liberty

Sometimes, in a shop window, you appear,
set up between others of the same gender,
dressed in new clothes and marked
with a little card, a price on your breast.

Then I know again how much I belong to you.
The only thing that in my life has meaning
becomes a thing counted at the checkout.
We go out together for an hour.

In the evening after six the shop window
is covered with a cloth as high as a person.
You manage to peek out the top with your eyes.

Departing people are making themselves ready
to banish the bad spirits about you,
so that no doll may mistake itself for a man.