Threadbare Truths: What’s the Oldest Thing I’m Wearing Today?

The thread around my wrist?
It frays.
No, not a Raksha Bandhan thread.
This one's older.
Older than the promise it once tried to keep.
It’s crimson-turned-ochre,
a memory in fibers,
knotted by a hand
I don’t remember loving
but who loved me like a ticking clock.
Yes, I still wear it.
Yes, I don't know why.
Maybe I forget to remove things
that don’t scream.

What's the oldest thing I'm wearing?
My confusion.
It's a snug fit.
Tailored during those teenage evenings
when silence filled the room
louder than Nirvana’s lyrics.
It doesn’t wash off.
No detergent can strip the "why"
from the fabric of "me."
So I layer it under my shirts,
next to my heartbeat,
like a barely-there tattoo
only I can feel.

My jeans.
Torn not by time,
but by insistence.
I tore them myself
to match the faces
I met in alleyways of rebellion.
The brass button says 2007.
So long ago,
so close in the hips.
These jeans know how I danced
with doubt,
with her,
with the long summer of mistakes.
I keep sewing them where they bleed.
They keep bleeding in silence.

The mole on my neck
is the oldest thing, technically.
Wearing it since birth,
but I guess that’s cheating.
Still, it itches when I lie
and tingles when someone calls me by my full name.
It has a pulse.
Like it's trying to remind me
of all the people who kissed it
without knowing what it meant.

I’m wearing a ring,
gold-plated,
but the plating has given up.
My aunt wore it before she became memory.
She wore it to funerals and weddings—
funerals where she cried,
weddings where she pretended not to.
It slips on my finger,
a half-size too big,
just like her advice.
I promised not to lose it.
I lied.
But found it again,
in the bottom of a sock drawer,
between two lost apologies.

Do scars count?
Because I’m wearing them like couture.
Especially the one on my left knee—
a remnant of an angry bicycle
and my misplaced confidence.
It split me open once
and sealed me differently.
I show it off
to no one in particular.
Some people wear watches,
I wear time.

These glasses.
Bent slightly at the bridge.
They see more than I do.
They remember my first poem,
my last breakup,
that dog that didn't bark,
that sky that did.
Prescription outdated.
So are most of my decisions.
But they still rest on my nose
like they belong.
Like I do.

Under my socks,
I wear ancestral calluses.
Generational blisters.
Feet that remember
running away
and running towards.
I’m not sure which direction I inherited,
but every step squeaks the same.

I wear shame like a shadow trench coat.
Draped across my shoulders,
it flaps when I move too fast,
like it wants to say,
“Slow down.
They might see you trying.”
But I do try.
Every day.
To unzip it.
Still, the zipper rusted
back in 2012.

A laugh.
Mine.
Cracked.
From use,
or misuse.
A laugh that once echoed in classrooms
with no ceilings.
It sits now,
like an artifact in my throat,
occasionally brushed off
for performances.
It doesn’t match my eyes anymore.

The cufflinks—
one is not original.
Lost one at a party
I didn’t want to attend.
Bought a replacement
from a secondhand shop.
Now they’re twins by force.
Like some friendships.

Oh, and this skin.
Tanned unevenly,
creased at the elbows,
thick with stories I forgot to write down.
It wears me more than I wear it.
On loan, I suppose.
From stars,
or cells,
or someone who knew better
but lent it anyway.

I almost wore my father's watch today.
Almost.
But I couldn’t handle
time ticking
in someone else’s rhythm.
Instead, I chose
the absence of time.
A naked wrist.
A quiet rebellion.

This old T-shirt.
Faded graphic,
half a quote from a band I don’t listen to anymore.
Sleeves curled like sarcasm.
It smells like drawer-liners
and detachment.
I wear it because
not all comfort is clean.

I am wearing my past
like a palette.
Every color layered
over regret,
over songs I skip,
over people I still Google
in the dark.
No trend can cover it.
No runway will ask for it.
But I own it.
Like I own the silence
after someone asks,
“What’s the oldest thing you’re wearing today?”

XlSo here I stand—
stitched together by relics,
fragments,
fibers of former selves.
Today, I wear a museum
curated by memory,
designed by discomfort,
modeled by someone who’s still learning
how to walk in old shoes
without tripping
on new days.

And tomorrow?
I'll probably wear
the same poem.