Breakup Shirt Story

Breakup Shirt Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Colin packed mementos away into a box.

He had done this routine before. He would do it again. His closet had several small boxes just like this one. He was never quite sure why he did it each time. He didn’t go back and look. He wasn’t that type of guy. But he kept them. And when he moved, he moved them. But he didn’t like to look.

The box was a form of closure, except that it didn’t truly end things. They were safe and packed away somewhere. Everything was gone, but not really. Things could always come back if he needed them to. And therefore, there was never true closure. As long as he could dig them out and look at them again, there was always a chance, no matter how small, of a return to importance or a repeat of relationships. On some level he knew all this, but he was able to conveniently ignore and suppress it.

Photos, charms, letters, they were all going into this latest box. Some of her perfume that had been left behind. Something sexy made of black lace. Then he got to the shirt. He paused and looked at it. He wasn’t sure what to do.

It was a good shirt—the cut, the fit, the style, the color. They were all good choices. They all worked. He liked the shirt. He wore it a lot. He would have liked it and worn it, even if it hadn’t come from her.

No one ever knew how to shop for him. She did. She was the first of them to ever get his style. Or maybe she just had enough style of her own. But he preferred to think it was because she understood him and appreciated him. It made it seem all the more special, as if there was a true and genuine connection between them.

They all tried to buy him clothes. All of them. They always tried. He didn’t know if maybe that was just a desire that most women possessed—to dress their man. If it was, he didn’t understand it. Was that some leftover instinct from childhood, from playing with dolls? Or maybe they all just judged his wardrobe to be terrible and never felt comfortable enough to tell him. Maybe they were trying to make him better. Or maybe there was a sense of pride in seeing him in something they bought. It didn’t make him a possession, but it made him just a little bit theirs.

She bought him clothes and they fit and they were stylish without being flamboyant. He liked a simple quality to his clothes. Straightforward colors and designs. Nothing too flashy. Nothing too radical. He didn’t want to stick out in a crowd just because of some silly design. She got it. She got him. It was right.

He loved that shirt. It reminded him of her. It reminded him of all the good things that had worked. It reminded him of all the potential in the world.

He loved that shirt. It, of course, had to go.

Light a match, and drop it in. Burn burn burn.

He could never look at it again. He could never know it was packed away in some box. He could never be tempted. It was just too close to being her.

He sat on a lawn chair in his backyard and drank a beer and watched the shirt slowly be consumed by the flames.