I dream of a shop filled with all the clothes I’ve ever worn

The shopkeeper offers the shirt

I wore on my eighteenth birthday -

the only gift I asked for -

blue and black, like a lumberjack’s,

frayed threads, faded check,

detached collar and yoke

now healed. ‘Try it on,’ he tempts,

sleeve across breast, hand on heart.

It no more fits than the jeans

I wore with it - red-tagged,

stitched patch - the felt-penned plimsolls

lying gape-mouthed on the floor,

or the skins of outgrown friends

hung on a rack by the door.