JENNY LANE - WRITER 

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Like moth-eaten clothes,

you are scraps of memory.

Non-existent and forgotten

– preserved in my mind

like unwanted fabric.

 

You were sewn into my childhood

needle-tipped with loose threads.

When you plague my sleep

fabric scratches my stomach,

polyester tightens around my neck.

 

I feel humiliation

when old jumpers, shirts, and socks

are drawn out of the loft,

as if the times of you

are laced into them.

 

I have never really seen moth-eaten clothes,

At least – I don’t think I have.

Maybe I threw them away before

they ever had a chance to be eaten

I grew up too fast to know.

 

Maybe I am the moth

that put the holes in those clothes

– chewed through the elbows,

tore away the toes

eager to forget and hungry to grow.