Threadbare

Love fits close as an old pair

of jeans. Remember the denim-blues
she wore at eighteen?
Stone-washed twenty times,
ripped at the knees, laundered
to shredding --  the woven membrane
between your hot hand and her thigh. 
Bleached whites, slender-cut,
dropped at your bedside
when passion's skin craved
silken dreams of Spanish knights,
and mornings, pulled on again
beside the clicking clock set to alarm.

She lays them out now

in folded stacks, a tactile
collection and tries them on
to remember how they fit
then, how they felt new.
But there’s no going back
to then; and now
she wears you that way,
worn and threadbare
as an old pair of jeans.

© Diana Renfro 2005