When you asked me to find
your pants, confessed they had not
come back from the laundry at
your new assisted living place, I fought
against crying. I wanted to hurl obscenities
at these people who are supposed to help you.
Don’t they know those pants
were the last ones you bought
for yourself? The ones you got
the very last time you visited your sister?
When you returned from that jaunt
to Kansas City with those
dark green pants under your belt,
you beamed at the completion of a road trip
without incident.
Weeks later I learned you’d had
a fender bender in KC, had quietly fixed
your car. How odd to know embarrassment
made you lie to your own daughter.
How clear that you ache
to get behind the wheel again,
see the activity bus here
as the poorest substitute.
Still. These people who now do your
laundry, don’t they care? In the basement
of this building are rows of freshly-washed clothes
hung just so, waiting to reunited with their
owners, but your pants have disappeared
and I am so afraid of the day
when you will do the same.