Levis, circa 2000, unearthed today

You were young when I wasn't yet wounded into the bitter taste of burnt love letters. So I wore you often, pulling on your brass zipper, certain that life too coheres, takes the form one gives it.

Now, years later, we meet again, dear Levis, as I clean the closets, prepare myself for another departure. Hoping to feel the youth who spent days in your easy shell, I propel, with difficulty, my legs down your frayed length, your cloth now as flimsy as my picket fence dreams were then, and too small, the arms of your waist, much too small to contain this belly, which has since swollen¹ with the dark knowledge of pain.

[1] And more prosaically, with all the junk food that gets eaten in windowless rooms in the course of 14 hr work days.