. black cashmere .

 

I grasp it and hold it to my face; so soft, so black, so ... thought ... lost. “Thank you, thank you so much.” The face across the counter is florescent lit. “Sure” and he’s a white orb blur as I lose myself in the weave again.

 

I fold it neatly, standing there at the sea green Formica counter. The companion scarf’s modern blue and black of my namesake’s tartan, almost as kind to my sense of touch as the cashmere of the coat, I drape over my head and wrap around my face. It is the coat that is my concentration.

 

The call had come the day before “We have … At your soonest opportunity … Thank you.” IAD, an eight-hour round trip that a friend had been kind enough to make, carrying me to this lost piece of my last hope. I’d jittered and trembled on the first side of the journey; silent but in constant motion. Body movements that my hope would have been unable to restrain herself from placing a hand upon me to stop, to calm or order me more neatly.

 

Folded, I hold tight; there are sublimated and transferred tears running freely at this reunion. “Come on girl, we’ve got a long trip back; let’s grab a burger at that Five Brothers on the access road okay?” I can only nod, I’m not hungry but I know my friend is.

 

Back in my shared flat it’s night now; I stare at the form of it laid out on my tiny Ikea couch/futon. The arms lay spread out, the glimmer and reflection of the large black buttons, the diagonal seamed folds of the exterior pockets; its gesture shape of ‘what-CAN-be-done?’ abandoned surrender. I’ve held it to my face in search of some sense of place that might still be held in the silk lining. I’ve shrugged it on (it, seeming even larger than before), and remembered having worn it in both directions, going and in numbed escaping.

 

There remains no scent of the wardrobe it shared with her dresses and tops and tailored trousers. Its careful woven fibers hold no haunting presence of her touch from when she’d searched for the envelope she desired so much. A torrent rush of memories and sensations seizes, tumbling me ‘til, off balance, I clutch the back of the Good Will five-buck chair I’ve bought. ‘… red and black … you are decorating this space in memories bitch …’ I nod and smile at that, the fashioned presence of it all.

 

There had been a promise made, among the many; one that in her own rush toward recognition of reality she had left unkept. Her run to separation had meant it would be unmet; and my own recognition, and surrender, and urge to hurt myself had led me not to make the demand that became regret. I run my hand across the welcoming night of the coat’s color. A knife edge glint catches, drawing my eye and my fumbling needy fingers to tip touches; index and thumb I explore, grip, and capture.

 

A single strand of shoulder length, trapped and carefully lifted. Its texture and formation betrayed in strong blazing black … hers. Lifted and placed carefully on a sheet of American letter-sized ink jet ultra-white printer paper; it curves and one section has that un-straightened slight curl occurring. That unkempt, first thing in the morning, not going out today, no contacts in the eyes, pajamas for the third day running, perfection to it. Yes, the color is not her natural hue but issued forth from a bottle; but that too is her taken form.

 

Carefully I fold the paper’s length in half over the strand. I hold it to my cheek and mouth. The coat, I hang properly buttoned and place it in the closet to stand at attention beside my LipService™ leather. This single bit of her presence I put safely in the frame behind the only photo of her I’ve permitted myself to display; against agreements made. I am that sentimentalist, always.

 

© Amanda 2014
Image: "The Last Day" by © 2014