A Cluttered Memory by Richard LeDue

My closet has no bones,
but just old sweaters,
limp as skin shedded off
long enough ago to look like someone else,
even if it belonged to the same person
who still dismisses the ethics
of neatly folded laundry on Saturday afternoons
and the siren call of hair dye
among fluorescent shores
down aisle five at the drugstore,
yet somehow who I was survives without me
believing it,
like a ghost haunting hangers,
while poltergeists pay no rent in my head,
stomping about because they feel
threatened that my wrinkles the beginning
of being forgotten.

--

Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He has been published both online and in print. He is the author of ten books of poetry. His latest book, “Sometimes, It Isn't Much,” was released by Alien Buddha Press in February 2024.
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