In goes the handle
out goes the dust
laying before me
are twelve little socks.

One little line,
one whispering voice,
but six little stories
and one big choice.

Pair one is small
( Was I ever that way?)
in the worst imaginable shade of faded yellow.
Whose feet could fit such a sock?
Only ones too small to care.

Pair two is pink, how exciting.
Not now, but then how they shone!
Big enough to understand that these trips
were part of life: not just apple juice, teddy bears,
And pretty pink stockings.
They were the insurance,
the sureness of success.
Cause those socks were
too small to understand failure.

Pair three is tan.
Boring and generic like all the other sick people.
With slip prevention marks on every side,
for those folks who walk on the tops of their feet I guess.
I thought those thoughts, I remember.
Everything else is a hazy mist of one word: “relapse.”

Pair four brown.
They were free, I remember: “can I take them home?”
It hadn’t been long since I took the last pair,
but I had to be certain sure.
Nothing was certain sure anymore.
“They’d better be - we pay enough for this stuff.”
I heard anger and gruff in the linings of my father’s voice.
“Expensive” was one of those big bad words
Like “relapse”.
Tears on my mother, dark lines on my father,
and another pair of socks on me.

Pair five is blue, sky blue and not quite pretty
with slip prevention marks almost faded
from sliding down long hospital aisles day after day I suppose.
Bald now but not alone, my hairless friend was at my side sliding down next to me.
She ordered rainbow fuzzy socks for christmas.
Her parents thought they were for keeping warm,
I knew better.
They were for slipping down ahead of me.
Without those slip prevention markers she always won.
But I wanted her to win,
I thought we’d win together.

Home was not the same - those faded blue socks sing sadly.
I didn’t deserve the snide comments or the pretty flowers and I didn’t want either.
I wanted to be sliding, sliding, sliding down slippery halls in pale blue hospital socks.
Racing with her because she didn’t sympathize, she understood.

Pair six weren’t mine. They were rainbow polka dotted
Because the family forgot them when they took her away.
She wouldn’t have forgotten - but she didn’t have a say.
For each brightly colored splotch there was a word for what she was:
Bold, imaginative, fierce, inspired, perserverent.
Then you ran out of dots yet the list ran on.
They say she lost the battle, but I know they’re wrong.
Sometimes when it’s quiet I hear her sliding, sliding, sliding, down golden streets -
Running victory laps in heaven do doubt.

That’s it. Twelve voices quell.
Now the choice.
What about pair seven?
Mamma won’t cry and Papa won’t groan.
I won’t be a burden cause nobody will know.
Who could guess that behind high heels and two degrees
lay six pairs of socks in one dusty drawer
telling contrary stories of a disease and a war.

Quietly I make a place
for pair number seven to have some space.
And if I don’t come back then surely someone
will open the drawer, let the dust kinda fly,
then listen to six little voices wondering why.
If pair never seven never comes home
then niether will I.
Then six pairs of hospital socks, all a little too small, are all I’ll leave behind.