That cardigan hugs you warm—
itching.

When you pull it tighter,
you smell his childhood fears:
alabaster, faint, trembling.

Your body was even last week,
but the cashier pressed too deep,
as if checking for something still alive.

She said there were moist parts
holding your heart intact.
Called them artist’s hands.

Some dreams end up
stacked beside canned goods.

He had them too—
crumpled drafts,
ink pressed into the shape of wanting.

You swallowed them whole.

Now they surface—
tonsil stones,
hard, legible,

like poems your body refuses to forget.

The name stitched into your sleeve
burns.

You flinch at the sound of him.
At the memory of how he arrived—
loud, uneven,
already becoming his father.

Still—

he sits across from you,
in every empty chair,
mug in hand,
paused mid-sentence.

You remember his ribcage,
how it read like lines
waiting to be filled.

That’s when you knew:
you had loved a poet.

And now—

you are one too,
pulling the cardigan tighter,
trying to make something whole

out of what stayed.