Old Sweatshirt
November cold seeps through the windows while I’m wrapped in cotton worn thin from years of Sundays,
this sweatshirt’s lost its shape, its color faded gray from navy, but it fits me like belonging.
The sleeves are stretched, the cuffs unraveling, the fabric soft from countless washings,
and I’m horizontal on the couch with nothing planned, no obligations pressing,
just me and faded clothes and afternoon that stretches lazy into evening.
She’s wearing my old flannel over nothing else, reading something on her phone,
and there’s an intimacy in this domestic stillness, in this unremarkable zone
where neither of us needs performing, needs presenting, needs to be anything but worn.
The radiator clicks and hums its ancient rhythm through the floor,
a sound I’ve heard ten thousand times and I’ll hear ten thousand more.
And honestly the rattle’s comforting, familiar like the fraying on these sleeves,
like the knowledge that perfection isn’t what contentment needs.
I could get up, I could shower, I could put on actual clothes,
but why disturb this equilibrium, this balance that we’ve chose
between ambition and surrender, between doing and just being here,
in sweatshirts that have history, that have seen us disappear.
She shifts her weight, her bare leg brushing mine, and neither of us moves,
just acknowledges the contact with a laziness that proves
volumes about how safe this is, how unremarkable, how real,
wearing clothes that tell the truth
about bodies that aren’t perfect, about fading distant youth,
about choosing this reality over some imagined better day,
about staying here together in our faded threadbare way.
Tomorrow we’ll put on our work clothes, return to being functional.
Tonight we’re just worn cotton and November cold and comfortable.