White Coats

We spent years pining for one like this.

Then, we donned them proudly,

on the stage, in the pictures, in the halls,

those coveted garments.

For a while, they sat pressed,

freshly embroidered with our names and hung in closets

while we toiled away in class.

When we were thrown from the shelter of

comfy lecture halls and Zoom classrooms

and they were too.

Today they sit

crumped in backpacks, shoved in lockers, on the back of chairs.

Weathered, wrinkled, and pen-stained,

their white glimmer no longer pure, though

always worn with love.