pattern and absence.

sometimes it’s the slight absences you notice most. those fragments of your day, spare threads, you thought. if they snap though, you feel them, even if you didn’t ever imagine you would. because, see, you normally wouldn’t even have been wearing this coat, with the loose threads and frayed ends, but it’s been cold out lately, even in summer. actually, that’s not even the odd part (cold fronts in summer have been pretty common lately), instead, it’s funny that you’ve been wearing this particular jacket. it’s your oldest one, so old, in fact, that you like to pretend it’s been around forever, no specific origin, just appeared one day, was part of God’s original creation.

nevertheless, you know, in the back of your mind, where you fold away the things you don’t like in tissue paper and place them in bottom drawers or forgotten suitcases, exactly who that jacket belonged to before it belonged to you. on certain kinds of days (ugly ones that can’t make up their minds), the jacket still even smells like him. or rather, you think it does. in reality, you’ve washed it too many times for that to be even slightly true anymore. whatever the case, none of that matters because you’ve gone and ruined it.

there wasn’t much use to it anymore anyways, but there was something you liked about wearing it half-draped around your shoulders this summer, at night, when you sat smoking on your driveway. but maybe, you realize, pulling it warm and clean out of the dryer, you’re overthinking it. after all, it’s only missing a few stray threads, the wispy kind that had worked themselves loose and hung at the edges. you pulled them out idly when you were or bored, or thinking.

and perhaps you could just ignore the worn places, the faint holes. you’re looking at it, crushing it warm to your chest, and thinking about trains. about how you like them, especially at night, when you get to fall asleep to the steady, sexy rocking of the train always moving forward. anyways, it’d be nice to curl up in this jacket on a train ride like that, just before going to sleep. you decide you will keep it, for a while, at least.