That shirt! You’re halfway there, lifted
out from the not-yet-thought-of and headed
for the burned-in-memory: ours and therefore
also yours. It’s crisp and creased, squares
your shoulders, adds an inch to your back’s
width, and where it enters those slacks
it dives in silently; that Olympic, spashless plop
that draws applause, perfect scores. Stop,
admit you beat doubt fair and square this morning
when, facing your twin, clad in that, you buttoned
up and couldn’t argue a word against the feeling
you were more than theoretically there, outlined
in Japanese brush strokes, you were more than you;
perceptibly displaced the air while loosening the screw
of your neck to perform that Exorcist child-star
thing checking the tag’s authenticity, like the pinch
the lucky talk about but never really do. And just to clinch
this experiment, make it watertight, even publishable —
I’ll admit here’s where my own baggage enters into it —
I’d like to watch you watching it where it leans awhile
in a stiff wind, pegged at its wrists and nape
to a creaking clothesline that spins on its pole
giving that shirt a recurring view of parted drapes
in a window where I’m reflected, and beyond
that complication can be made out a chilled, half-formed
figure we’ll provisionally refer to as “you.”