Sifting through a row of clothes
hanging listless on their hangers,
I noticed an article missing
that I wore each day
as a symbol of my bookishness.
Though I have become no less studious
in the last few years of my enlightenment,
I no longer wear my cardigans 
punctuated with acrylic wooden buttons
and colors that warm
even the most tepid blood.
I don’t recall
ever consciously deciding
not to wear my lovely cardigans,
yet they seem to have disappeared
from my closet all the same.
It is not until I shift
deep enough into the columns of clothing
that I find some of my other misplaced thoughts,
solid like the shallow grey,
no less fresh than the letters exchanged
among friends long since separated
by circumstance or setting.
I pass the fabric
between thumb and forefinger
and wonder about reaching out to friends
who would remember me
in the cardigans of yesteryear.