What Hands Do to Things

I found it in the donation pile,

the blazer, forest green and old.

I couldn't leave it there—I had to smile

at something I couldn't bear to fold.

The nap was dark where hands had held,

smooth as leather, worn almost black.

The elbows showed where threads had felled,

worn thin from years of bending back.

I took it home. The buttons stayed.

The seams were good. The fabric

had given in a hundred places made

by years of living—a small traffic

of bodies in cloth, of shoulders leaning,

of hands that didn't mean to wear it down.

I hung it where it could rest, meaning

to preserve it, not to let it drown.

The velvet keeps the shape of what it held.

I trace the thin spots with my fingers slow,

learning how we destroy what we compelled

ourselves to love, the only way we know.