A shirt is a shirt, right? Taylor has a genius for buying shirts. I don’t know where she shops. I wish I could choose words like Taylor chooses shirts. Then we could talk about things that count, like why we can fight. Friends for three decades. Sometimes we get so hurt and so mad at each other that I wonder, is this the end? Words don’t have to be loud to hurt. We turn away, mute and wounded, until one of us has healed enough to make peace. But we never talk about what started the silent war. No, sorry, no, nothing.
So, Taylor had a shirt; it said “Harry Rosin” on the label at the collar. I don’t know who Harry Rossin is, but the cotton is so soft. As soft, I imagine, as her cheek would be if I cupped it in my hand. Cotton sheets feel that way if they can survive thirty years of washing, bleaching, and drying on the clothesline in winter.
It was the month before Christmas when I started teasing her: “That’s a fine-looking shirt, Taylor, but it would look better on me.”
“You little tinker. You’ve got a key to my house, and now you want the shirt off my back?”
She didn’t give me the shirt for Christmas.
I found it cleaned and pressed, lying across my folded laundry the day I came to deliver the Christmas tree and a load of firewood. I cried. I had only been kidding. What I liked most about that shirt was the way it looked on Taylor. I put it back in her closet and let myself out. As I pulled the key from the lock, I remembered when I first saw her wearing that shirt. It was the first evening we spent alone together. The relief in her quiet presence was intoxicating. We sat in her living room in front of the fire. I watched her find boned fingers undo the brooch at her neck, undo the first button, and then the second. Warmth and wood smoke, her voice was low and quiet like a horse’s nicker.
I did nothing. I was too distracted by fighting my desire to reach out and take her hand in mine or brush my lips across that fire-lit throat so casually laid bare. I sat holding my knees for dear life so that my hands wouldn’t drift loose, drawn to the hair at the nape of her neck, soft, finespun firelight gold.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel
I had only known Taylor for a short while, so how was I to know that this would be the most vulnerable I would ever see her? How was I to know that the trust she offered in her gestures was an invitation?
Fool, I had returned to her closet. The only thing that could keep the silence between us was that she could allow me to give it to her.
The smell of pine needles and tears still sharp in my nostrils, I let myself back into the house and retrieved the shirt. I have carried it with me from move to move over the last thirty years.
I have never worn the shirt. I never will, and of course, we don’t talk about it ever.
This was written by our contributing writer, Jane Corkish.
Image Source: Magnific, shurkin_son
Leave a Reply