Shoddy Possibilities

You said you never knew.
But it’s something one doesn’t confess
to a suit, a wall of fabric behind which
hides something like a real person,
the mourner and the mother,
and the weave of all others.

You never heard the words,
those threads holding together
a couture life you wished to wear.
Back then, the rules wouldn’t allow it,
when you still believed in rules, too.

You decided to break some anyway,
threads or rules, it doesn’t matter now,
allowing others behind your wall
to what you wanted touched. And lives,
slippery-skinned and angry,
stood raw in the light.

So now we’ve slipped away,
maybe one day to reach for
these lapels of shoddy possibility again,
on this buttonlesss suit that
I wore just for you.

An “I’m desperate to write a poem” free write.