Someone has my sweatpants
(and it’s obviously not me)
Those many tracking e-mails
turned out to be a work of fiction
serialized over several days
And the “packaged received”
confirmation at the end was like
a drawstring strangling the truth.
My wife has tried to comfort me,
not just the way the sweatpants’
scrunched bottoms would have
hugged my jilted ankles,
but by texting the post office,
which can only confirm the vendor
sent it to the wrong address,
somewhere on this very street,
received by a person whose morals
are apparently as elastic as
the waistband of my joggers and
who refuses to do the right thing,
assuming I’ll never notice them
walking past the house in
medium-sized men’s maroon
sweatpants, whose failure to arrive
means my legs now slide into denim
and khaki as though they had
made reservations for a Swedish
massage but wound up getting pulverized
by a Shiatsu specialist instead.
So now on my daily stroll
I keep vigilant, a sense of outrage
and righteousness blending like
polyester and cotton, certain that only
once I spot the culprit and yank
what’s mine right off their lower limbs
that I will at last be able to relax,
lounging in the baggy sense of
justice that someone fleeced.
Shane Schick is a poet, founder of 360Magazine, content marketer, and DadX3.
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