Originally posted on greenfairydotcom
His scent went too quickly from the pillow, so she now keeps the shirt she removed from his bag before he woke wrapped in clingfilm and buried at the bottom of her wardrobe. Every time she removes it and presses her face into it she is sure she can see traces of him dissolving out into the air and is terrified of the day when the last remains of him will vanish completely. She briefly considered investing in a vacuum sealed container, but woke one night in fear at the thought of his smell disappearing irretrievably into the machine so now she rations her time with the shirt to when she's been good, when she deserves it. Occasionally she would like to shake it free from its wrappings, wind it around herself, use up all of its power in one intoxicating burst of remembrance. Her self-restraint amazes her.
There's a hair on the shirt, too. Not one of hers, the wrong colour. She is almost certain it is his, but it has been so long since she saw him that the picture of him in her mind has grown loose, fuzzy. She tries to remember how he looked when she was with him, but as soon as she fixes the smile in her mind, the eyes slide out of focus. Her stomach cramps with the idea the hair might belong to a girlfriend of his; she is sick when she thinks she might be so carefully preserving the claim of another woman.
She worries constantly that he'll notice the shirt is missing and contact her for its return. He has not been in touch since, but she watched him taking down her number and is sure that he knows how. She frets partly because it would mean the loss of the shirt itself, and partly because she is not sure how she could make speaking to him again equal the painstaking scenario of their next meeting she has crafted in her head. Sometimes the threat to this scene so distresses her that she takes the parceled shirt from its hiding place and sleeps next to it. On those nights more than others she wills herself to dream of her fingers laced through the spikes of his hair brushing his collar, cuffs pushed back from his wrists turning this way and then that, but she does not.