Slrp

S.L.R.P. by Sarah Gutierrez January 22, 2015

S.L.R.P. had been trying to hold it together ever since March. She hadn’t been worn in eight months, you see, and the confines of the surrounding woodwork were beginning to wear thin on her polyester. Myself and indeed everyone in our little drawer were charged with the arduous burden of watching her days pass her by in darkness. While the rest of us rotated in and out of the drawer, S.L.R.P.’s existence quickly found itself to be at the very depths of our living quarters. Eventually, I could no longer see S.L.R.P. and her voice, which had once sounded like a cheerful birdsong was now a deranged and muffled cry coming from underneath me. I suppose this is as good a time as any, now that you understand my predicament, to explain how we cloths get our names. We use acronyms, naturally. It’s the most efficient way to ensure organization among the drawer clans. The first 1 to 2 letters are your type, the second your color, and the third is your design. In my case, T.O.F. stands for T-shirt, Orange, Feather. Being as we are located on the central coast of California, where it is always sunny and the temperature fluctuates from a lovely 76 degrees to a freezing 68, you can imagine that I am worn frequently. In S.L.R.P’s case we have Sweater, Long-sleeved, Red, Panda. Now it just so happened that a morning came along in early November that my

clan was not prepared for. Overnight the temperature had dropped to a devastating 66 degrees which was not on our planned schedule for the day. Thank the great tailor of 1864 that the human’s alarm had not sounded yet! All I could think and all anyone in our drawer could talk about was how S.L.R.P.’s time had come. I knew that as soon as the human woke up she would stumble out of bed, reach in our drawer, and pluck one of us out, not giving a second thought to what was in her hand. We had to move quickly. First, I made sure that everyone was awake by raising the alarm which J.2B....