“Hanging onto Growing Threads”

With the dirt washed away, I hang up the laundry and my child’s wardrobe,
Then, I encountered the obstacle of running out of smaller clothes hangers.
There’s no possible way I could put children’s garments on the larger hanger,
But I try it anyway, grabbing the wide triangular plastic attached to a hook.
I make what I expect to be a futile attempt to suspend the tiny shirt,
Only to find that the miniature clothes hangers are no longer a necessity.

About the Poem

I stumbled upon this article recently, not long after I realized my son’s clothes can be hung up using adult hangers now, which, until recently, were too large to use, and only the smaller clothes hangers would work. Although perhaps quite strongly, the article expresses what I expect most parents to feel: a sense of concern for your children’s safety as they grow older and head toward new experiences, growing out of simply being a parent’s child and the dangers and obstacles we imagine they may come to face. In this poem, I wanted to express the weight on the mind of imagined concerns and directly relate it to the child’s physical growth through the daily act of hanging laundry.

About the Author

Toshihisa Nikaido has worked in the space development industry and the entertainment industry, taking part in creating entries in many popular video game series such as Resident Evil, Pokémon, and The Legend of Zelda. As a writer, Toshihisa has written short stories, games, and poems, been published in several literary journals, and received multiple honorable mentions or been shortlisted in writing contests.