The Suit

by Cecelia Hagen

I once bought a suit of gray—
boxy jacket with three glum buttons,
mid-calf skirt that had no drape.

Maybe I had read it was best to
dress for the job you wanted, or maybe
I was seeking some notion of safety

in intentional ugliness,
or hoping to appear more
mature by dressing differently.

Whatever prompted the suit’s purchase,
I never did wear it or dare to return it.
It hung in my closet for years, a rebuke,

a lost cause I never cared to champion.
I would gladly have traded it
for a single fiddle lesson

or a sweet dream spent listening
to someone with an expressive face
play a Bach cello suite.

I considered dismantling the suit-—snipping off
the round grey buttons so they could tumble
with their kin in my round black button tin,

maybe pulling out lengths of the hem’s thread
and twisting them into elegant figure eights
for some later use, even scissoring the broad planes

of skirt and jacket back
to sew potholders, perhaps, or upholster
a chair too small to lean back in,

but instead I put the suit in a sack
with a handful or so of other mistakes
and gave it away.