The Winter I Wore My Mother’s Coat by Marianne Szlyk

That fall my friend told me that Marilyn

had been size sixteen, Fifties’ curves too large
for the Eighties in Boston. There bone-thin
women earned MBAs, wore strings of pearls;
slight girls danced all night to the Talking Heads.

That year I borrowed Mom’s old coat to wear
on the subway to class. I’d risk coffee,
oil paint, turpentine stains on night-blue wool,
fur cuffs soft against my wrists. I was size
sixteen like Marilyn, like Mom’s old coat.

Mom said she hated to think of her coat
riding the subway, wandering the streets.
Her coat, her smart coat she’d bought at Denholm’s
with her first paychecks to walk to St. Luke’s
when the priest, back to all, still spoke Latin.

If she knew, if she’d seen me wear her coat
as I followed Mike Green around Boston,
she’d be furious. Then the lining tore.
I thought nothing of it. I could not sew.
Light snow turned to rain. Cars splashed her coat.

Spring came. Mom discarded my winter coat
like high school diaries, Janis Joplin
LPs, my thin, hippie skirts. I should have
brought Mom’s old coat to the cleaners to fix
the lining at least. There were dry cleaners

on each corner, even near campus
to fix the coat I had not bought, the coat
I had stolen just to feel like someone,
not a fat girl, not a drab girl in art class.



Marianne Szlyk's poems have appeared in Green Elephant and One Art. Her stories are in Mad Swirl and Impspired. Her book Why We Never Visited the Elms is available on Amazon.