A Poem

The Shirt

I gave that old t-shirt away last year

There’s no telling who has the thing now.

If I were older, I wonder, would it

Be easier to give up holding on

For my attic might be full of things, old

New, or still attached to some tempered memory.

Or, rather, would it be a heavier thing,

One that I could not yet bear to drop and

Pass on to another with less clothing

For fear that, shirtless,

I am naked, cooling, one relinquishment closer

To that great, galvanized archway, past which

I shall cede my final possession out right

And be bodiless.