My earliest memory is the steady
brown hands of a little girl. I
suppose others might remember
being raw cloth or cotton thread,
but I don't remember anything
past her, her smooth touch, the
sway of her body as she bounced
lightly in a seat too big for her.
She fed me into her machine,
one part at a time, and I became
We spoke in transit, sisters and
cousins, folded and stacked in the
cool dark of our cartons. "I am
jeans for a little boy!" one said.
"I am a dress with purple flowers!"
said another. I listened. Drank in
the words of my family. I had been
spun, dyed, sewn. I was ready for
Many days in transit. More in the
big warehouse that smelled of rust
and sweet cardboard. We grew
restless. Then, hands damp with
sweat pulled me from my sisters
and laid me in a plastic bag, with
five other shirts, two pairs of pants,
a pack of shoelaces, and a rhinestone
belt. We snuggled each other and
whispered about how lucky we were.
When you opened my bag, rolled us
joyful across your nervous comforter,
I knew happiness. You ran your hands
across our weaves, stopping at me,
staring with your piercing eyes.
("Oh, here it comes." the comforter
"Why are you so ugly?" you asked me,
held me up in front of a mirror, across
the body I was built to hold. I saw
myself for the first time.
(Purple and orange is certainly a choice.)
You made a noise and I fell from your
fingers into a wastebasket, whose
apologies sounded like condolences.
My funeral took three days. Other clothes
murmuring soft apologies over the
scalloped ivory plastic of the wastebasket.
I didn't know what it meant.
And then, I was bundled in plastic,
carried to the bigger bin, dumped
There were other hands, other words
spoken, movement. With people, there
is always motion. I thought.
The bag exploded when it hit the ground,
rolling me and every other thing
across a field of things. "You still
have your tags," a raggedy pair of
jeans said. "Why, you're still a baby!"
The dump enfolds me like an infant,
an unwanted child that it cannot birth,
as I lay in the dark. My bright colors
have not faded, though I am stained
by coffee grounds and other things.
I miss your hands. More than anything.
