You on My Teal-Blue Sweater

Some time after you had finally – finally – uttered those treasured three words, “I love you,” I found you in the most unexpected way.

It was a brisk day in March. The wind whipped around us as we left the room, reminding us that winter was still roaring. But my senses were filled with the ember of the night before. You had pulled me close to protect me from the harsh spikes of frozen rain that assaulted us.

After you were well on your way back home on the seven-hour drive, after I had taken my boots off and trod up the stairs, drearily thinking of you and not imagining just how I could go another month without seeing you, I went to change my clothes but stopped dead in my tracks.

The teal-blue fabric on the left shoulder of my teal-blue sweater brushed over my face.

I was in sensory shock.

I could vividly smell you on the left shoulder of my teal-blue sweater, the very same colour as your beautiful eyes.

I smelled it throughout the day, and the memories of your sweet kiss, your tender touch, and your insatiable hunger to be with me were startlingly alive. The memories flooded over me, drowning me in the honey-sweetness of your presence over and over and over again.

Of course, I wore the sweater the next day to work. The smell was still vivid and strong on the left shoulder of my teal-blue sweater, the colour of your beautiful eyes. Again, I was flooded with full sensory memories that overwhelmed me and brought me to a place where I could drift in and out of you.

I closed my eyes and smiled many times that day.

Even if only just for a heartbeat, I would feel as if I were truly feeling the tenderness of your kiss. Just for a second, I could feel the way you made me shiver.

My head spun all over again, and I was filled with longing all over again, even as I sat at my desk, surrounded by way too many people to be melting from the memory of your sweet kiss.

I closed my eyes and was looking directly at your face, strong and vulnerable, loving and wise all at once, those beautiful teal-blue eyes soft and warm and strong and heart-melting all at once. I would smile in a smile that only love can bring as I remembered you many, many times throughout my day.

I certainly could not wear the same teal-blue sweater another day, although I would have if I could have gotten away with it. Rules shmools. Instead, I left it on my night table and reached for you again the moment I got home, and then again before bed.

I had to really search to find you, but I found your smell again after only a brief moment. I breathed in deeply. My smile came back, and I was back in your arms. I was loved in your arms again.

The sweetness of your smile that I treasured between our kisses floated in and out of my almost-real thoughts throughout the day. The magic of our lingering, sweet kiss filled me again and again.

At night, I drifted to sleep with the smell of you wrapping its protective, strong arms around me. I slept in an unusual peace, smiling the smile that only love’s true love can bring.

A few days later, I woke up in the morning and rushed to the closet to smell the left shoulder of my teal-blue sweater, the very same colour as your beautiful eyes, and there was no denying that you, your smell, was completely and utterly gone.

I searched and searched for the comfort of having that little piece of you to prove that you were not 800 kilometres away, not one month away, not so far beyond my reach. I searched for the comfort, the desire, that the smell of you and the thought of being in your arms would bring.

I could not find it, yet the memory of you, of us, of our sweet kiss, longed to be remembered. The longing was remembering the memory. Oh, this parallel of longing for memories and remembering the longing was torturing me. I was so bereft not to have something tangible of you in my hands. I ached to smell you again and fill myself with a part of you, any part of you, anew.

The teal-blue sweater, the colour of your beautiful eyes, got washed and then hung back into its proper place, in the middle of the back-hanging bar of my closet. There were times I would miss you terribly, so I would go to my closet and smell it, just to see if there was anything left of you on that precious teal-blue sweater, the colour of your beautiful eyes.

I breathed in deeply, imagining myself nuzzling against your back.

I closed my eyes and held my breath, hoping beyond hope to catch the lightest scent of you, still possibly, impossibly, lingering there.

And far beyond my wildest hope, my craziest dream, there you were.

I had found the memory of your smell, and there you were again, as if the smell had returned to the left shoulder of my teal-blue sweater, the colour of your teal-blue eyes. You were laughing at my silliness for smelling a shirt that you had touched weeks before, and that had since been washed clean.

A smile crept over my face. The kind of smile that can only be smiled by one who knows what it is to love being loved.

After that, every time I saw you, I would breathe, breathe, breathe deeply against your neck, drinking you in with every full breath. You always found it endearing, but to me, it was my connection to our love.

And so I hold our memories. I may never again be out with you and lean into your back, nestling in the way that I do to breathe you in, but even so, I sit and hold you.

I will always close my eyes and imagine breathing you in when I think of you on the left shoulder of my teal-blue sweater, the colour of your beautiful teal-blue eyes.

I will rush to bed now to meet you in my dreams, where you are always waiting for me with a small smile on your face, knowing that I will rush to your neck first, to smell you.

And I will smile.