Jeans of the Disappeared Man

______________________for Jean Paul

Long on me, so he must be tall. White speckles orbiting frayed
seat pockets make me look like I know labor, like the hammer loop
was a choice of function rather than aesthetic. The mashed lint mass

of half a dozen grays I pulled out on my first wear felt perfectly
intentional, as though rolling detritus into a planet was more craft
than happenstance. My mother-in-law found them at his mother’s

estate sale, this severe little French woman who adored an American
soldier all the way to the Gulf coast, was perhaps both fascinated
and horrified at the Anglo-Franco-mélange she found spoken there.

Their deal: the baby could have a family name, but spoken aloud,
he would be entirely American. John Paul, precious John Paul.
I wonder if she stuck to that when they were alone, if his J might

have softened as she soothed him to sleep, smoothing his hair
and crooning Frère Jacques on a loop. It sounds like he never
quite got the hang of being still. His whole life he had to rocket off

sometimes, maybe just to be sure there was anything else out there.
Every vanishing, she hired a PI to track him, paid them to chase
his footprints west. Always west. How many tries did it take him

to make it to the ocean? He came home every time without a fuss
even when he was old enough not to. With her gone, this one sticks.
Utah gas station CCTV footage is the only proof he wasn’t raptured,

wasn’t the one believer on a planet of heretics, an idea I weighed
when the wide, wise eyes in the only photo of him I found online
shot straight into mine, said I know something no one knows.

This is why I’m sure he’s alive: I’ve never seen an unsmeared
armadillo, but that doesn’t mean they ain’t out there, and so is he,
rolling wild down some California shoulder, perfectly at home

in the leather armor of himself, not for one moment wondering
about the faded, paint-constellated denim he abandoned back
in Beaumont, Texas when he noticed all at once that the endless

miscellany ricocheting between his life’s narrow walls had grown
louder than his own bellow, so he sauntered off in the direction
of the falling sun until he could hear again what he had to say.