‘Stolen Coat’ by Lane Ashfeldt
Aged seventeen
I wore scraps rummaged
from Granny’s wardrobe.
A scratchy shift dress
of cloth woven
at Douglas Woollen Mills,
smart long ago, now giving off
questionable signals.
And for a time, an army coat
from the charity shop.
Whose army I do not know,
the coat of some
half-cut boy who should
have stayed home,
but would not miss out
on the thrill of war.
I remember the cold
that night. Snug in my
stolen coat of many pockets
until one of the lads talked
me out of it, distracting me
while his friend shrugged it on.
Once he had it round him
there was no return.
A freezing wind blew uphill from
the Lee and keeled into me.
Time to leave, cold or no.
It was never really mine
that young soldier’s coat,
I could not pay its price
but had to have it. And now,
like him, I had to let it go.
Lane Ashfeldt is a short fiction writer whose stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and literary journals. A collection of her stories, SaltWater, is published by Liberties Press, Dublin. ‘Stolen Coat’, appears in the anthology of poems and songs about Cork City, On The Banks, edited by Alannah Hopkin (The Collins Press).
© Lane Ashfeldt, 2016. Banner image © Jo Mazelis, 2016.