My shirt today is a hand-me-down
from my grandmother
on my mother's side
who likely wore it better that I.

I can so easily picture her,
in the giant house on the coast of Maine with
flowerbeds and
the ocean and
seagulls hopping over the ashtray
that she and Grandpa share.
I can see her,
standing on the fluffy sheepskin rug
before a mirror (twice as tall as she and half the breadth of the room)
and reaching down
to the antique drawers below,
wincing at an ache not yet forgotten in the morning's pills
as she retrieves the shirt at random.

It's a pretty enough shirt-
white with thin black stripes
running horizontal most of the way up.
Sleeves hang to the elbows-
and hang they would off her palsied, wrinkled frame-
and the whole thing is thin,
light,
screaming "old lady."

I bet,
as she sat down alone at her dining room table,
eating her marmalade on an English muffin,
that she didn't slave over
the fact that she was wearing sweatpants
or the fact that she was wearing the same pink slippers
that she's had for twenty years.
I bet
that when her husband came down
for his toast with butter and raspberry jam,
they didn't speak a word,
that he didn't notice her shirt
(which is much like any other of her garments).

Was that the moment?
The moment she decided
that with her next letter she would send this shirt,
with a sticky note on it,
"For Abby."
Or was it later,
as she sat with a book she'd read a dozen times
(and was too old to see the print besides),
smoking a cigarette
and watching the tide recede?
Did this shirt walk
through the grocery store parking lot
in search of
laundry soap and 2% milk
when she chanced upon the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets
and thought of me?

I guess we'll never know.