Tag: Emily Fragos

I began writing “Turning the Tables” in January of 2022. My new wife, Amanda, and I had just been newlyweds for two months. The temperature dipped into the twenties that evening; and To keep warm, we decided to clean out my closets to make some room for her things in our small apartment. At that time, I had been reading Emily Fragos’ poem, “The Sadness of Clothing.” The speaker in the poem tells about going through her spouses clothing after he passed away. Even though no one had died, I still felt a sense of grief as we pored through my stuff that had accumulated over the years, deciding what to part with. “Turning the Tables” started churning when we found my old rucksack with its portable table inside that I write about in the poem. I rarely write in the second person viewpoint, but the way Fragos used it in her piece inspired me to try it in mine. I truly would not feel the impact of her opening two lines, however, until months later as we went through my father’s “sad clothing” after he passed away: “When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived / their usefulness and cannot get warm and full”.