children's wear

I do not remember clearly, but my mother says
she wrapped my tiny body, low in temperature,
in my soon-to-be favorite blanket,
a multi-colored affair grandmotherly made
for the family's newest arrival.

She does not know where
that blanket has gotten off to;
perhaps it was a prisoner of childhood wars,
stuffed into a forgotten crevice
by a forgetful sibling and left behind
by a hurried family trying to set up
their new home down south.

Pictures help me to remember next
a woolen cap pulled down past my ears,
which my mother says reminded her
of my grandfather in the winter,
whose bald head could not afford to lose
what loving warmth he had left to spend in his old age.

I wore that cap until it was beyond repair,
the crown of my head weathering a hole
into its thinning fibers like a group of unrelenting gases
pushing through a single spot in the Earth's atmosphere.