Close Out Sale

Turns out things aren’t going that well.
Turns out you wake up and you’re thirty,
and the clothes you are wearing aren’t ironic
anymore. They are the clothes you wear.

One day you wake up, and look in your closet
and realize it is every terrible thing your mother
ever said to you, all cut from 100% poly-blend.

These are the days your shoes dissolve in the rain,
the days your boss asks if that’s a hole in your pants,
and you don’t even have to look down to confirm.

These are the days you pin a poem to the page
just to see it stare back at you, gasping for air.

Copyright © 2004 by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. “Close Out Sale” originally appeared in Working Class Represent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2004). Used with permission of the author.