Once in a while I like to get creative and a little fictitious with my writing… Enjoy.

The Story of a Yellow Sweater

You told me you liked my yellow sweater and I thought maybe I could wear it every single day if it would make you smile. I took the cardigan off at the end of the day, folded it neatly in a square on my bed and thought of ways to keep you perfectly in my memory. As Perfect As That Yellow Sweater.

My mother told me from the beginning that we can keep a lot of things in this lifetime. We can keep a room clean. We can keep an eye on someone. We can keep trying. We can keep up with the times. But she also taught me that we cannot keep people, especially if they don’t want to be kept. And we should not let others keep our hearts, “That, my love, is something you are wise to keep for yourself until you know that someone else won’t stomp away with it.“

And I stared at the yellow sweater, creased in all the right places, and I decided that I would give it to you. You could take it. I would never wear it again anyway, in fear that someone else besides you might place me in their thoughts as “the girl in a beautiful yellow sweater.” Our last interaction would be my giving you that sweater. I would ask you to take care of it. I would tell you that one day I would want it back.

And then we would part ways.

We probably wouldn’t talk for a while. I don’t imagine we would call each other on a daily basis or keep a strand of letters pushing back and forth between our mail boxes. You would say its just the way that life works. I would nod my head in agreement but I wouldn’t say anything at all.

It may be a few months or it could stretch out into a couple of years but one day I would call you and ask you if you still had the yellow sweater that I lent you.  I would ask you if you are taking care of it, and I might tell you that I would want it back one day. But not today. Don’t send it back to me today.

Our conversation might be short. Quick. We would hold ourselves from talking about our jobs or how we have changed since the last time we traced each others’ faces. Maybe we would laugh a little but I know it would make me miss you so, and I don’t need to make heartache out of misplaced laughter. I don’t need to make heartache.

And so our dialogue would only last for a few minutes, though we both know we are quite capable of rambling for days. But either way, that yellow sweater would have served its purpose. It would have planted me right where I wanted to be; amidst a pretty tangle of your thoughts and memories. You might think about me for only five minutes, but either way, I would have crossed your mind and indulged in every step of the crossing.

In the most perfect of worlds I would never need to give you my yellow sweater. It could stay hung up in my closet and I could take it out sometimes and wear it when the weather was perched upon gloomy forecasts. In the most perfect of worlds I would never need to lend you that cardigan because we would find another way to bridge our distance, our                  gaps, and make it so we never needed a quarter-sleeve frock of sunshine to stay woven to one another.

But you can keep my yellow sweater, and you can think of one day sending it back. But I hope you never do. I hope you never do. Because as long as you still have it, we still have a way of connecting our dots and finding one another again, in a world you swore never wanted my hand in yours.

Keep my yellow sweater. And I will keep pretending that you don’t keep another part of me. Another knitted mess of mine.

Keep my yellow sweater. You and I both know: I sewed my heart upon the sleeve.