She wanders down thrift store aisles. Her fingers tip-toe across the shoulders of faded reds to faded pinks. Everything stiff with the soap of second lives. She searches the well-washed rainbow for something she would know. Not this halter-top with the sequined flowers or that v-neck t-shirt designed to meet (just barely) the waist of jeans from ten years ago, but somewhere further down this row or the next or the one at the very end.
The misshapen cottons and impermeable polyesters whisper stories. I was once, they murmur, stretched against the breasts of a young woman who danced sweat through me and pulled laughter into my seams. She tingled when her partner touched the small of her back and leaned into the rhythm cupped in his palm.
She doesn’t believe half the tales of boardrooms and backrooms and bedrooms rustling from hook to hanger. This blouse was purchased for one half-hearted job interview and never worn again. This jacket was bought on sale and never fit quite right. These sneakers were worn long and often, but couldn’t be thrown out and now were not allowed to die. They haven’t fooled her once in all the weeks she has been combing these forlorn castaways.
She sighs. Her gaze drifts until the colours blur and blend into background. It isn’t here. Again. Nowhere in the carefully sorted corals and yellows and greens. She jerks the hangers back and back and back and back. Her frustration shrieks along the racks.