Birthday Suit

You have to try it on just once

each year, stuffing your body into it

and checking the cut in a mirror:

arms so tight in teenage years

now dangle, shoulders flop,

the seat and calves are baggy

and everywhere are wrinkles that

cannot be pressed smooth, rips

beyond any tailor’s skill, stains

impossible to scrub away,

and a button or two is missing

but look at how it still fits.

S.C. Hahn is a Nebraska native who has lived in Sweden for over two decades. A retired editor, he lives on the southeastern edge of Stockholm near the Nacka forest preserve, where he goes to find mushrooms, stones, and trees, and – if he’s lucky – poems. His work has appeared in many journals, and a collection of prose poems, A Sky That Is Never the Same, was published in 2008 by Stray Dog Press, now Argos Books.