David M. Alper

The Coat

I stroke it like the last breath of prayer, this corduroy coat still shaped on your shoulders. The collar, folded as keen as a silence. The pockets— as empty as a Sunday without your din.

I press the tip of my thumb against the buttons, each one sewn on like a witness. The sleeves stiff with time's own safeguard. The seam at the cuff frayed where your hands once tore apart their own secrets.

I wear it, even the warm air, even that your absence is not a winter I can speak. And in the mirror, I see it change.

The material cinches into grief. The cuffs spread wide like mouths, shedding the tale you never told. The pockets are stuffed but not with what you would think— a letter you never penned, a silence held within the lining.

I attempt to take it off but it will not release me. It clings to my skin, bends my back into a secret, folds my arms into a wound I am unable to bandage.

This coat. This other body I possess. This form upon which you linger, upon which you never left, upon which I am waiting always.

David M. Alper's work appears in The McNeese Review, The Bookends Review, The Fourth River, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.