You’re Not So Naked As You Know

Causation’s a story; the sequence is all
There is to what’s happened, but you snip the threads,
Slice off a ribbon of sequence from the bolt,

Maybe a few lengths from several different bolts,
And you get to work on making a story.
You know it’s not whole cloth. You know it’s better

Tailored to your mind, once fit to causation,
However much measuring, cutting, stitching,
Pleating’s necessary to give it your shape,

And all stories form wardrobes fit to your shape.
You know it, and you say so. You say, it’s just
A story, while saying that stories are life.

Causation is a name for morality.
In one of your most famous stories, the cause
Of all misery was an ancestral lie.

After that, in the story, you understood
Shame, and for shame you had to make yourself clothes.
Consequences cut to causes shape those clothes.