clothes in candlelight

clothes in candlelight
we forget
they’re singing to the dead

for that’s what we become
to them when we undress
and drop them on the bed

their form when
not worn
collapses like theology

illuminated by the passage
of imagined time
they’re

dead for us, too
when not in use
on us

that’s when the old
masters of chiaroscuro
saw them most alive