Folding New Socks

Folding new socks and thinking of the months I lived in my car. The cold of a new winter beginning. The thrift shop blanket I switched the tag on to save a fiver. Enough for food from a sunset to the next. Some days all at once. Others with nibbles through the hours.

My drawer is full. Full of new socks. I am unable to imagine a simpler symbol of my riches. And the drawer pulls adjacent to another. And there are four more drawers overflowing with abundance. The ease of my mixing and matching a ridiculous luxury.

I do not shiver through these days. I do not ache with a gut knifing pain of hunger. I do not lose hours in unslept fatigue.

I roam invisible. Whether under sun or moon, my comfort remains unnoticed. Nor ever accepted, acknowledged, or understood. The true value of my riches is the benefit of being unseen. I am worthless in my wealth.   

It is strangely the same as when I suffered. No one acknowledging or caring for a man wandering without means. A body and mind without value. A stranger’s eyes might barely make out my outline walking past.

Except in the night. It was different in the night.

When everyone would see me. The predators who never slept with the dark. The addicts arrowing dumpsters. The mentals repeating mantras. The creeping dealers thieving souls. The moon-shift cops scanning lots, convicting us as all the same.

I will put on a new pair of socks and walk about in the night. I will feel the grand gracious self-gratuitous indulgence of being invisible. I will stroll past the hospital knowing I do not know any of the nurses’ names. I will see the Hotel Hondas and Long Stay Chevrolets in the nooks and alleys knowing none of them are mine. Nor will I recognize a tent in the brush, a shopping cart cornered in bus stop lean-to. I will savor the unfamiliar. The plush of warm cotton softening my stride.

I am folding new socks and thinking of those months I lived screaming in my dreams. And of these months I live with riches once unimagined.

Folding new socks and thinking of how I’ve come to accept I deserve to be alive. I deserve each and every one of these magnificent days I have been given. I am worthy of the roof and the cupboard and the bed and the blanket.

And the love.

Imagine. Me. Worthy. Of a drawer full of new socks.

1. Cover photo by Author.

© Copyright William Hazel, 2025