Tale of the Shirt

Soaked, sleeves sopped past the hands it melted into the sand and it’s body split open like a trout’s mouth burbling in the breakers.

Maroon it faded to pink at the shoulders in the sun but seemed dark blue when wet.

It spent body-less years lightly folded with no one. It hung thinned and loosed with time. 

It was witness to growth, grief, progress and crime. 

In the bar it is used to mop tears and dries billowing in the breeze blown through the rigging.

At the end it is pleated again and takes, somewhat unconvincingly, its first shape- that of the upper half of its first love now in his burial suit