Poetry: "Pants"

By Frannie Lindsay

I want a pair of rose-colored corduroy pants
like my father’s that I can wear
day after day, the wale gone
smooth as a girl’s cheek against
each knee, the waist loose, gnawed
in four places by rusting suspenders
that I can’t work anymore
by myself, while I ache and wait
in my Lazyboy rocker, big-print book
sprawled flat, spine down in my lap as I close
the red, red eye of my face.