Jan Dennis Destajo

My Whitest Shirt

or what used to be, now
has been torn and resewn into
new pieces based on function
and the appropriate location. The sleeves,
squared into potholders in the kitchen,
anticipating the accidental burn. The body
or the half of it is what dries my feet.
The cuffs what I tie my hair with. The rest,
a patch on the crotch, on a pillowcase. I think
it’s better this way, for lesser laundry, less
weight for my arms to carry, all the byproduct
of idle curiosity as days as pass by
heavier
than the last. Speaking of weight,
I think I should mention the fact that I have
only one working arm, by that I mean one
that is perfectly capable and the other a skewed
humerus even an implant couldn’t repair
without more money, so everything must be
light, if not, there’s the pain. As painful
as consolation like the time my only blue
shirt became the sling to said broken
arm. At least you can continue living
in this world, the radiologist said,
holding the limb like a pair of loose tongs,
that if you continue using comfortably,
you wouldn’t know
what it cannot
carry and accidentally let go.
Wasn’t folding laundry supposed to be
more meditative than this? I wonder
if this is what brought Diderot into crippling
debt, saying this is the price of my regret
There aren’t even enough jobs I can
take to buy my way out of a bone
healing more than it should.
What more of a single memory
brought upon by a missing shirt
on the stack—with the buttons
transplanted to a bag, to a stuffed animal
as an eye, to another body
of a shirt. I haven’t dressed for anything for god
knows how long; I wouldn’t be able to fashion
myself other than what is appropriate
at home. I stare at the excess that is my closet,
and each piece a disembodied memory
fading away, away from what it already had,
away from a world whose stains
no continuous rinsing could ever remove.