Stitched In Memories
one/one
On the bleached and wearing tag of the article of clothing I held in my hands was his name, written in his shaky handwriting, Robert. The muscles in my mouth twitched to form a small smile. I fondled the faded fabric between my hands as a crisp breeze swirled around my body.
It was autumn. My favorite season. A season I had been well waiting for. The lone reason why I had been anticipating this season was to simply have a fair and logical excuse to dig the old sweater out of its confinements from a dusty dented box that sat in the back of my closet.
I remember the day he had gotten the damned old sweater a good five odd years back. We had both went to the local fair with a few friends that summer. It had been an altogether horrible time. I had ended up spilling up everything I had scarfed down during the early hours of the fair after Robert had forced me to go on a few rides. He merely laughed at me and told me to clean it up and pull myself back together. Once the scarce light of the sun had fallen that day, the temperature sank even lower with it. Robert had complained constantly that it was cold and that he had wanted to go home. I remember me becoming sour because the only reason I had agreed to go in the first place was because of the fireworks. The last thing I was about to let him do that day was to let him ruin the only good thing of the whole event for me. So after a while he gave up on whining and bought a cheap radio station sweater that was being sold at a small set up of advertisement. Robert did nothing but complain about how itchy and uncomfortable it was for the rest of the evening. But it was the type of sweater you simply bought to advertise whoever had sold it. It was not to bring comfort, style or much warmth. He should have known that.
Though I guess something down the road changed Robert's thoughts towards the flimsy article of clothing because there came a point in when I could have sworn that it was the only sweater I ever saw him wear. I would often tease him mindlessly about how that must have come down to only only piece of clothing he owned anymore to cover the skin of his upper body. He only brushed me off with the excuse that it kept him warm.
My legs crossed themselves on the block of cement where I sat not too far from my apartment. A shiver worked its way through my body as another lick of chilled wind came in contact to my bare arms and neck. But I wasn't quite ready to slip on the sweater I held in my hands.
Soft ripped fibers surrounded a small ring of my skin as I poked my finger through one of the many holes littering the sleeves. Robert had always had a bad habit of chewing on the sleeves to every single sweater or jacket he owned to his name. My finger slipped from the loose restraint and drew a path along the warm faded blue of the material. It didn't take long for my eyelids to dip and my hands to bring the sweater close to my face and inhaled.
Now maybe most people would say that it would be impossible for me to still detect his scent on the cloth after all this time. But I don't believe it was so much of me actually breathing in the smells this sweater had absorbed. It was more of the memory and the place the sweater took me back to in my mind. A happy bright time that I had preserved over all this time.
Every stitch, every fiber, brought back all those fond memories and images. With every brush against it, the material released a special tainted scent and thought to flood the space around me mentally. And with every seemingly colorful scent brought on a different memory to be put on display in my subconsciousness. Everything from expressions painted across the features of his face, a joke he had told me aimlessly or even an event we had shared together- it all came back to me. All of these flooded into all the different spaces in my past, the spaces that he had filled with unforgettable warm memories.
In honesty, I did miss him. Though I had also accepted that we had grown apart from one another. Still, there were those times I wished he had never even left me for the polished educational floors of that college building to begin with. Even though he had distinctively told me that he would come back for me, we lived in a world of reality. And in reality, things just don't happen like that.
Having knowledge of me living in a realistic world, the shock of knowing he had found someone else miles away from me was a fairly dull ache to my heart. Half of me had even suspected such a thing to happen sooner or later from the date his presence disappeared from my side and off to the other end of the country. It did take me some time to heal, but life always goes on. We still even called each other just to catch up.
We were both a precious part of our years of growing up. Together me and Robert explored our own mistakes of love, sexuality and friendship together. The two of us had sewn up memories and lessons together through what could be considered the worst or the best years of a human's life. I don't think either of us was willing just to toss that to the wind and move on.
After another fleeting moment, I finally went to tuck the sweater over my head and pop my head and hands through the correct slots. My arms instantly wrapped around my body. While my skin soaked in the soft comforting feeling of the material sliding against it and warming me slowly from the chilly air around me I let out a content sigh.
I wore that old sweater close to my skin, to my heart. Not only to remember him as one of my first and seemingly only love so far in my life, but also to remember the happiness he had brought into my life. That boy had crumbled the leaking ceiling to my stone cave and showed me the brilliant light of life and the world around me.
I remember back to the one day he phoned me. It was only about a few days or so after he had packed his life in two lone boxes and drove away from that chipped house of his. That was back when he was still determined to keep us bound together. He began questioning me on if I had seen his sweater anywhere or if perhaps he had left it in my apartment. Selfishly though, I lied and told him that last I had known, he had packed it with the rest of his things and that maybe it had got lost on the journey.
Though I knew exactly what had happened to his sweater. Yes, I had discreetly taken the sweater from his house a couple of days before he was set to leave me. And to this day I remember the whole string of events that had boiled up to me caving in and stealing it all for myself. It was the only day left that me and Robert had to ourselves before he drove off down the winding battered roads of the town we had lived in and off onto the smoothly flat roads to his destination.
I inhaled the sleeve I held covering over my mouth, rubbing the soothing cloth across the plane of my cheek. It didn't take long for the perfectly embedded memory to surface as clear as day into my thoughts and overrule everything else. In my mind the scent of lust was all around me. The scent of musk and sweat lingering in the faint smell of oranges, the scent Robert seemed to always be dusted with.
For a fraction of a moment I felt overwhelmed in the vivid memory I was sinking deeper and deeper into. Soft pants and small sounds of pleasure that I felt only I could make Robert emit were flooding my ears. My vision was full of his graceful body as elegant muscles pulled and flowed in sensual motion as it moved and danced with mine. Fear and passion tainted our sweat as our bodies tangled into one another for what seemed like hours upon hours. Fear of us loosing one another and the passion of us wanting to give all we had to one another in attempt to prove what we had meant to each other.
After he had mumbled incoherent tired words at me, he had fallen fast asleep with me tangled into him and the sweat dampened sheets of his bed. I remember how I laid there with my arms wrapped around his waist with my lips pressed to the warm skin of his shoulder. Just listening to the faint mumbles he made in his sleep and the steady breathing from his lungs, I had never wanted that moment to end.
At some point while I laid there with him as he dreamed, a sudden urge came over me. My mind came to recognition that Robert would be leaving in only about a day or two and I had nothing solid to remember him by aside from a few silly photo stand pictures we had taken together a while back. My eyes had come to focus on that silly heap of a sweater that, not too long ago, I had peeled off his body in a smooth heated motion. For quite some time I as I rested beside his peaceful form I debated with myself whether or not I should take it. In the end I slipped from his arms and snatched the article of clothing up before running it out to my car. I had come back into his room with a smile of comfort as I molded my body back into the curve of his.
So when he had asked me all that time ago if I had known where his sweater was, I lied. Possibly because I was a little ashamed that I stole it to begin with. But I couldn't just let Robert leave me without something to take me back to the sweet times we shared.
In the end I've yet to tell him that I stole his sweater. I'm yet to tell him the secret I kept with myself. The secret of me wearing the old flimsy sweater that he had bought pointlessly years back from time to time. That I wore it to remember his scent, to remember all the memories that we had seemed to stitch together in the wearing seams of the sweater. The very sweater that I had wrapped comfortingly around my body, letting my spirit soak in his scent and his memory.
It was autumn. My favorite season. A season I had been well waiting for. The lone reason why I had been anticipating this season was to simply have a fair and logical excuse to dig the old sweater out of its confinements from a dusty dented box that sat in the back of my closet.
I remember the day he had gotten the damned old sweater a good five odd years back. We had both went to the local fair with a few friends that summer. It had been an altogether horrible time. I had ended up spilling up everything I had scarfed down during the early hours of the fair after Robert had forced me to go on a few rides. He merely laughed at me and told me to clean it up and pull myself back together. Once the scarce light of the sun had fallen that day, the temperature sank even lower with it. Robert had complained constantly that it was cold and that he had wanted to go home. I remember me becoming sour because the only reason I had agreed to go in the first place was because of the fireworks. The last thing I was about to let him do that day was to let him ruin the only good thing of the whole event for me. So after a while he gave up on whining and bought a cheap radio station sweater that was being sold at a small set up of advertisement. Robert did nothing but complain about how itchy and uncomfortable it was for the rest of the evening. But it was the type of sweater you simply bought to advertise whoever had sold it. It was not to bring comfort, style or much warmth. He should have known that.
Though I guess something down the road changed Robert's thoughts towards the flimsy article of clothing because there came a point in when I could have sworn that it was the only sweater I ever saw him wear. I would often tease him mindlessly about how that must have come down to only only piece of clothing he owned anymore to cover the skin of his upper body. He only brushed me off with the excuse that it kept him warm.
My legs crossed themselves on the block of cement where I sat not too far from my apartment. A shiver worked its way through my body as another lick of chilled wind came in contact to my bare arms and neck. But I wasn't quite ready to slip on the sweater I held in my hands.
Soft ripped fibers surrounded a small ring of my skin as I poked my finger through one of the many holes littering the sleeves. Robert had always had a bad habit of chewing on the sleeves to every single sweater or jacket he owned to his name. My finger slipped from the loose restraint and drew a path along the warm faded blue of the material. It didn't take long for my eyelids to dip and my hands to bring the sweater close to my face and inhaled.
Now maybe most people would say that it would be impossible for me to still detect his scent on the cloth after all this time. But I don't believe it was so much of me actually breathing in the smells this sweater had absorbed. It was more of the memory and the place the sweater took me back to in my mind. A happy bright time that I had preserved over all this time.
Every stitch, every fiber, brought back all those fond memories and images. With every brush against it, the material released a special tainted scent and thought to flood the space around me mentally. And with every seemingly colorful scent brought on a different memory to be put on display in my subconsciousness. Everything from expressions painted across the features of his face, a joke he had told me aimlessly or even an event we had shared together- it all came back to me. All of these flooded into all the different spaces in my past, the spaces that he had filled with unforgettable warm memories.
In honesty, I did miss him. Though I had also accepted that we had grown apart from one another. Still, there were those times I wished he had never even left me for the polished educational floors of that college building to begin with. Even though he had distinctively told me that he would come back for me, we lived in a world of reality. And in reality, things just don't happen like that.
Having knowledge of me living in a realistic world, the shock of knowing he had found someone else miles away from me was a fairly dull ache to my heart. Half of me had even suspected such a thing to happen sooner or later from the date his presence disappeared from my side and off to the other end of the country. It did take me some time to heal, but life always goes on. We still even called each other just to catch up.
We were both a precious part of our years of growing up. Together me and Robert explored our own mistakes of love, sexuality and friendship together. The two of us had sewn up memories and lessons together through what could be considered the worst or the best years of a human's life. I don't think either of us was willing just to toss that to the wind and move on.
After another fleeting moment, I finally went to tuck the sweater over my head and pop my head and hands through the correct slots. My arms instantly wrapped around my body. While my skin soaked in the soft comforting feeling of the material sliding against it and warming me slowly from the chilly air around me I let out a content sigh.
I wore that old sweater close to my skin, to my heart. Not only to remember him as one of my first and seemingly only love so far in my life, but also to remember the happiness he had brought into my life. That boy had crumbled the leaking ceiling to my stone cave and showed me the brilliant light of life and the world around me.
I remember back to the one day he phoned me. It was only about a few days or so after he had packed his life in two lone boxes and drove away from that chipped house of his. That was back when he was still determined to keep us bound together. He began questioning me on if I had seen his sweater anywhere or if perhaps he had left it in my apartment. Selfishly though, I lied and told him that last I had known, he had packed it with the rest of his things and that maybe it had got lost on the journey.
Though I knew exactly what had happened to his sweater. Yes, I had discreetly taken the sweater from his house a couple of days before he was set to leave me. And to this day I remember the whole string of events that had boiled up to me caving in and stealing it all for myself. It was the only day left that me and Robert had to ourselves before he drove off down the winding battered roads of the town we had lived in and off onto the smoothly flat roads to his destination.
I inhaled the sleeve I held covering over my mouth, rubbing the soothing cloth across the plane of my cheek. It didn't take long for the perfectly embedded memory to surface as clear as day into my thoughts and overrule everything else. In my mind the scent of lust was all around me. The scent of musk and sweat lingering in the faint smell of oranges, the scent Robert seemed to always be dusted with.
For a fraction of a moment I felt overwhelmed in the vivid memory I was sinking deeper and deeper into. Soft pants and small sounds of pleasure that I felt only I could make Robert emit were flooding my ears. My vision was full of his graceful body as elegant muscles pulled and flowed in sensual motion as it moved and danced with mine. Fear and passion tainted our sweat as our bodies tangled into one another for what seemed like hours upon hours. Fear of us loosing one another and the passion of us wanting to give all we had to one another in attempt to prove what we had meant to each other.
After he had mumbled incoherent tired words at me, he had fallen fast asleep with me tangled into him and the sweat dampened sheets of his bed. I remember how I laid there with my arms wrapped around his waist with my lips pressed to the warm skin of his shoulder. Just listening to the faint mumbles he made in his sleep and the steady breathing from his lungs, I had never wanted that moment to end.
At some point while I laid there with him as he dreamed, a sudden urge came over me. My mind came to recognition that Robert would be leaving in only about a day or two and I had nothing solid to remember him by aside from a few silly photo stand pictures we had taken together a while back. My eyes had come to focus on that silly heap of a sweater that, not too long ago, I had peeled off his body in a smooth heated motion. For quite some time I as I rested beside his peaceful form I debated with myself whether or not I should take it. In the end I slipped from his arms and snatched the article of clothing up before running it out to my car. I had come back into his room with a smile of comfort as I molded my body back into the curve of his.
So when he had asked me all that time ago if I had known where his sweater was, I lied. Possibly because I was a little ashamed that I stole it to begin with. But I couldn't just let Robert leave me without something to take me back to the sweet times we shared.
In the end I've yet to tell him that I stole his sweater. I'm yet to tell him the secret I kept with myself. The secret of me wearing the old flimsy sweater that he had bought pointlessly years back from time to time. That I wore it to remember his scent, to remember all the memories that we had seemed to stitch together in the wearing seams of the sweater. The very sweater that I had wrapped comfortingly around my body, letting my spirit soak in his scent and his memory.
♠ ♠ ♠
I adore this.Thoughts?