It was too hot for the jacket.
Everybody knew it.
I knew it when I pulled it on.
I knew it when the lining stuck to my arms
before I even got out the door.
I knew it halfway down Main Street
with the sun hitting the parked cars so hard
the whole block looked angry.
I wore it anyway.
That is the sort of decision
that makes complete sense at seventeen
and none at all past that.
The jacket was black and a little too big,
secondhand,
one zipper gone stiff,
one cuff rough where the fake leather had cracked.
It smelled like closet dust and old smoke and somebody else’s cologne
that had no business hanging on that long.
I loved it.
I loved what it asked of me.
Stand different.
Walk slower.
Do not grin too easily.
Keep your shoulders set.
Do not let anybody think they can get the whole story
just by looking once.
Under it I was sweating through my shirt
and trying not to show it.
That seemed nearly perfect.
The whole age felt like that.
Trying to look dangerous
while quietly dying of the weather.
A girl I knew from school
passed in her friend’s car and laughed when she saw me.
Not mean.
Worse.
Like she knew exactly what I was doing
and found it almost sweet.
I wanted to vanish.
I wanted to look cooler.
I wanted, for one clean second,
to become the person the jacket promised.
Instead I kept walking
through all that heavy summer heat
wearing my ridiculous black armor
like a boy who thought style might save him
from being seen too plain.
Maybe it did, a little.
Maybe it made me look foolish.
Maybe those are closer than people admit.