Poem: Op Shop

Op-Shop

In a quiet suburban street, ladies visit the aisles of secondhand clothes. Hands separate racks, touch other lives that have come before.

    The young girl, sitting on a bus, straightens her blue pleats, and just around the corner, as if time hasn’t passed, wears a black leather jacket with studs. Later, she buttons a pin-tuck shirt for the insurance company, and on her first date, in that long-legged netted look, zips up her high-heeled boots. At the military ball, she awards the dance floor and all that gaze on her in desirous ice taffeta and strappy, silver stilettos.

    You don’t see the girl now, but the garments are laid out. The pleated skirt, the black leather jacket, the pin-tuck shirt, the taffeta ball dress, the stilettos, and tan knee-highs; all racked and marked in the same display, looking out the same window for a new owner, a new life.