'This is why I wear your socks today.' Photo: Paula May / Unsplash.
Why I Wear Your Socks Today
'Why I Wear Your Socks Today' by Dana Littlepage Smith
I wear your socks today
so that I can see more deeply
into the old woman ahead of me
in the post office.
She is ashamed to be so slow.
She says sorry, sorry to the queue
as she shakes in her girlish jeans.
I repeat the words you taught me:
I too will die. I too will age.
I am not immune to suffering.
I wear your socks still filled
with mud from the moor
—I have washed them twice,
still they breathe the wet and peat
reminding me that doubt like
water can be walked into and out of—
I wear your socks today
so that I can look into the face
of the mother of the child who
picking berries, blocks the path…
Remembering the care of your
silence, I stop when this mother
breathes Sorry, sorry.
No need for sorry, I say.
There is no need.
This homeless man wends
his way to us, his three legged
dog hopping along.
We live in the sum
of sun and shadow,
in one another’s seeing.
This is why I wear your socks today.
