The Old Hoodie

TW : Grief,  Drowning, Death
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People die, he said. You’ll outgrow this.

His voice, a lock clicking shut.

First love’s a fever. Sweat it out.

As if my heart had a headache,

as if grief could be solved with analgesics.

I didn’t tell him how, weeks prior,

You talked to me about the creek—

water striders skating on tension,

their shadows braille on the stones.

“I will take you there one day," you said.
But you never did.
“Nothing drowns there.” you said

And then you did.

Dad still quotes his prophecy like scripture,

while your name curdles in my chest—

a milk tooth I won’t spit out.

Some nights, I press my ear to the floor,

half-expecting the house’s bones to hum

the hymn your mother sang that day,

low in the grave he lay.

My sister says I’ve got a good jawline for veils—

But I keep your old hoodie
balled in the back of my wardrobe,

sleeves still holding the shape of your wrists—

two parentheses insisting to be filled.

Today, I placed that old hoodie in a donation box.

The sleeves, slack now,
no longer taut with the grammar of your arms.

Let it become a relic for someone else—

to unravel into their own trailing thoughts in parentheses.

I didn’t linger,
though the fabric still hummed

with the half-life of your rain
Even now, the box gapes like a mouth

waiting to whisper your name

Somewhere, your voice still laughs—

Water is the best place to be—