The Inventory

The new guy needs the top shelf and the rack.

I’m sorting through the ghosts of 2010.

These charcoal trousers still smell of incense

and the day we put the old man in the glen.

I try to suck in thirty pounds of life

to make the silver zipper teeth engage.

But the metal stays an inch apart,

strained and locked at a different stage.

I fold them back into the dark

like a debt I’m not ready to pay.