YOUR SHIRT

When you hang yourself
in the closet
at the end of the day
you are

not silk but
cotton--
grey, a
faded plaid with
white lines streaking
through
like the rib
cage of a bird, like your
breath
when it lives
there. Disembodied,
you are

finally visible.

I don't see the
shirt but
the spots you've
worn away, the
awkward bones, the turns
that

came without warning
leaving the
inner threads
naked--not torn just
open, durable strands
of
thickspun nerve.

When you hang yourself
in the closet
at the end of
the day and
bury

what's left in the
old skin--white
sheets, our
heap of comfortable,
often washed dreams,
I open
the door and

put on that shirt,
the old touch--
familiar as cotton, soft as
breath. And from
the inside
I feel it again--

the heartbeat, your
movement--
persistent as
the darkness that grows wild
around us.

First appeared in Poetry Northwest