Poems & Stories

Rite of Passage

There was a time
when I would politely gulp down
my utter sense of tragedy,
aghast at the thought that
you thought
I should
wear something as terrible as that.
An old lady shirt,
I would think, dejected.
Seasonal clothing.
Oh no, I don't mean boots and
slickers for spring rain,
or mittens and coats for winter snow.
I mean items
depicting symbolically
the season with gaudy decals.
Flowers and bunnies for spring,
suns, flags, gardens,
and sand for summer,
earth tone leaves or pumpkins for fall,
and snowflakes or snowpeople for winter.
No one but old ladies wear
garments embossed with these things.
They are uncool.
They have hung abandoned,
banished to the
nether recess of my closet.
But this year
something is different.
I am different.
Reluctantly I retrieve
the purple shirt,
with bejewelled spider web
that seems to have caught
a jack o'lantern
which makes no sense at all to me
and I sigh.
I reach my arms through
tortuous sleeves, drag
down past my head slowly,
and gasp
as though in the shirt
I had nearly drown.
They are still uncool
and perhaps I finally
accept that I am as well.
The coming of age ritual
has been completed.
"I'm wearing that shirt you got me, Mom."
She can't seem to recall
that it's not one
I picked out myself.
Now to find some
matching socks.