by Susan L. Lin
I still wear the denim pants I pulled on in a rush
that night a brushfire bloomed in our backyard valley
and we fled south towards the city in a silver minivan.
They were the most comfortable pair I owned:
lightweight floral-print fabric pocket bags,
a trio of metal buttons down the fly.
I’d bought them dirt cheap six years earlier
for barely two dollars on Friday the thirteenth.
Such a lucky find that at first I thought
the marked-down price sticker must be a mistake.
They were almost magic, a perfect fit.
The label inside was scattered with words:
machine wash cold and tumble dry low.
Then, warm iron only when needed,
and no chlorine in the bleach.
Not one word, though, about the gallons of fresh water
squandered to make even one article of cotton apparel,
or the greenhouse gases released during the process.
Not one word about the microplastics from polyester
filling our oceans and permeating the food we eat.
Not one single word about how to better care for the planet our closets (and we) call home.
Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella GOODBYE TO THE OCEAN won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her short prose and poetry have appeared in over fifty different publications. She loves to dance. Find more at https://susanllin.wordpress.com.