I owned a shirt like that

Back when we had a garden with

Tomatoes every shape and color.

Yellow, green, and red. Like the moon,

Like roses, globes, or shaped like rain.

On hot nights the vines would pull

Themselves from deep beneath the soil,

As if they ached for whatever they imagined

Would be possible, had imagined

On the day when I had placed them

In the ground. There was no fruit

Shaped like a star.

Mornings I would stand

Outside at dawn. The fruit would

Sing the sun into the sky.

My shirt, that red one, hung

Off of me like memories of a rivalry

That I would never win.

That was what I had to leave behind.