treatswords

He had given me his flannel the night before he left.

I had stood outside his car, the red interior looking like spilled blood beneath the star light.

I knew this day had to come.

He was off to do bigger things that this small town couldn’t offer. And I was left to learn how to live without him.

“I shouldn’t be gone too long before I make a trip back home,” He said as he lit a cigarette.

The wind blew through me, nibbling at my bones.

I shivered, but he didn’t ask me to hop in his car.

I wanted to be enclosed with him, our knee caps brushing. I wanted his worn hands to slide up my leg.

His hair was the color of spilled oil, slicked back the way my grandpas used to be. Combed intentionally off to one side.

“I wish you weren’t leaving.”

A bold statement slipped from my chattering lips.

“Yeah, it is what it is.”

He didn’t ask me to visit him while he was away. When he told me about leaving to attend a school out east, my body language had screamed, invite me.

The only thing that had kept me here was him.

I had pictured us, cracking crab legs, sipping hot chowder by the ocean side. Washing it down with salty beer.

Us kissing again, oh it had been so long. 

I had forgotten what his big lips pressed against mine felt like. The way he liked to nibble my bottom lip just a little too hard.

He was the town player, the one all the girls dreamed of having. I think he only kept me around because I didn’t beg.

The wind came at me again, this time hard enough that my small frame slid backward.

“You cold? Here put this on.” He said, handing me his grey wool flannel that had been wrapped around him.

I slid it over my shoulders, the scratchy materiel like lotion to my skin.

“Well, I should take off kiddo, that alarm is going to come fast.” He said, his lips curling into a half smile.

I felt worn from our years of friendship.

I had holes, stains, missing buttons.

I had been left too many times and yet I didn’t want to be washed clean of him.

I wanted to be that old favorite, the shirt he chose when he didn’t know what to wear.

I swallowed the words I had always wanted to say, my stomach never digesting them.

He drove away in his 1964 Pontiac GTO.

I went home and laid on my floor. Spreading myself like the outline of a snow angle.

His shirt wreaked of nicotine. I hated the smell of cigarettes, it made me gag.

I would sleep in his flannel, he was my old favorite.