Flash Fiction
I unload my wardrobe and pile my clothes in a heap.
In heaps, actually. Plural.
Mounds of T-shirts and pants and sweaters and hoodies and yet more T-shirts. I remember having liked some before. They’re no longer my favorites.
When’s the last time I wore this? It’s still good, still possesses quality.
What’s that brown one? That pants? Is that mine? I don’t think that’s mine. Either way, I’ve never worn it, never even touched it. How’d it get here? How deep does this heap of clothes go?
I remember this green T-shirt. I’d been looking for it way back in twenty-twenty-one.
What year is it now? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?
Oh wait, four? Twenty-four? Shit.
That one’s old, I like that T-shirt. It’s a good T-shirt.
Good God. This one’s still in its plastic. I never even took off the covering. How old is it? Who got this for me? I remember getting it when I still practiced the piano. The dust is many layers thick now, on that piano.
Why do I have this? Why do I have those? I don’t need these, I don’t need any of these. I never even wear these.
I won’t ever wear these.
They’re just here as filler, as hay to stuff my wardrobe with, as clutter to hide my two favorite T-shirts when I most need them.
Wouldn’t somebody else have benefited from all these? Couldn’t one or all of these have served as insulation for skin more wrinkled, strained, and haggard than mine? Couldn’t these T-shirts have covered living, breathing, shriveling, shivering skin rather than just more T-shirts?
Is it me or the allocation of resources? Am I allowed to hide behind the latter? Am I allowed to make excuses, to wallow in my privileges?
I pile the clothes higher and higher, make mounds of them, plural. Mounds that will never come to any use, never serve their intended purpose, unless that purpose was rampant, neurotic, frenzied consumerism, which it was, and in which case it served its purpose brilliantly.
At least most of them are cheap.
But then again, it’s the cheap ones I actually wore, the more expensive ones I shunned and neglected.
Funny how things are mirrored for clothes and people.
I guess it’s time to fold the clothes. Fold them neatly into piles so they take less space, so that it looks like I don’t have as much, too much.
Time to organize. T-shirts with T-shirts, pants with pants, blacks with blacks, outdoor outfits down below, indoor outfits up on the second rack, four neat piles that won’t last two days, and three rummages.
I pick out the ones I don’t wear, ones no longer fit to wear, and ones I don’t care a thread about. I pick out the ones that are illogical to keep, ones that are superfluous, ones that have outlived themselves, and ones that are just outliers, that don’t fit in.
Like always, this second pile, one with the broadest of labels and widest of categories, is pathetically shorter than any of the four piles. It’s like removing a river from the ocean, like our attempts at staving off global warming.
I hand over this pile- mostly useless, mostly junk, but some of it worthwhile- to mom. Maybe they will go on to help someone. Maybe my little acts of generosity will end poverty.
She’ll probably keep the ones that are still good, though. Definitely the polo shirt. That’s still very much intact; brilliant and shiny in its gleaming plastic wrap. But the rest, the rest will go to somebody or the other.
Hopefully.
I shut the closet door on my four, temporarily neat stacks of clothes. I’m never going to wear ninety percent of them. Definitely just the T-shirts on top and one jeans, and time will reduce the rest to rubbish that haunts my wardrobes. Never worn, never used, barely even touched.
Eh. Mom says I’ll need them.