Ode to My Winter Coat

Ode to My Winter Coat

Winter coat
Your rippling corduroy exterior
Betrays your soft cotton interior
Which used to be white, and now is sort of gray-ish because I’ve never once washed you

I missed you during those long, hot summer months
Oh, how I yearned for your warm embrace
Well, not really, because it was damn hot out, and if I would have worn you, you would have made me sweat more than I already do.
Which is never good.

But today, by the reading on the thermometer
It was cold enough for me to burrow into your entrails
Just like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker burrowed into the entrails of that giant thing they killed in that one Star Wars movie.
The Empire Strikes Back, I believe it was.

Today, when I stuck my hands
into the recesses of your pockets
for the first time in six months
you dealt me three blessings:

a forgotten tube of Medicated Chap Stick

two pieces of Dentine Ice Peppermint gum perfectly preserved in their plastic casing, like that mosquito stuck in the amber in Jurassic Park

a small fortune of individually wrapped after-dinner mints, the classy kind with chocolate in the center

and you dealt me one curse:
a nearly fossilized used tissue