---Some nights I lay here for hours and hours. Listen to all the songs you sang to me. Or the few that we danced to on our first, and only "date." All I can think about is you. The way you looked at me with those eyes that give me a transparent look into your heart. They way you grinned at me with that enticing smile. The way you held me on cold, snowy nights. The way you kissed my nose and wished all the pain away. And. The way you promised me forever.
I hold your T-shirt as close to my body as I possibly can. I've dropped a countless number of tears on it. It's camouflaged with cat hair. And it's even come with me on a few overnight trips. But it still smells like you-- whatever it is you smell like. Rugged cologne. Sweaty gym. Soft aftershave. Dirty football field... I've never known a lump of cotton to be so peculiar. I'll keep it until my life on Earth is done. I would take it to heaven with me if I could. I'll never get tired of it. I breathe in long, slow breaths, while at the same time I think of the time woven into this piece of cotton. As I breathe in I try to recollect all the peices and put them back together. I try to remember you in this T-shirt. I want to remember what it felf like to hold you in this T-shirt.
You're always reassuring me that it'll happen again someday. And it'll never stop happening. I'll get to hold you in this T-shirt again. And I'll have many more T-shirts smelling like you hidden away in my bedoroom. Because, of course, it'll be yours bedroom too. It'll be ours. We'll wake up next to each other, watching the cool, crisp breeze dance along our curtains, and listening to the animated birds sing praises in their own little language. We'll sit and eat breakfast at the same wooden table. Someday. We'll talk into the church together on Sunday mornings. The same church we'll be married in. The church we grew up in, and the church our children will grow up. We'll pray together, and you'll put your arm around me as I hold our little brown baby. She'll share a name with her auntie, look up to the sky with her mommy's eyes, and comfort others with her grandma's arms. Her pictures with show her daddy's smile, and her tongue will spit her grandpa's witty comments. Someday. It'll all happen someday.
But it's not someday yet. It's today. And today I'm doing about the only thing I can do. Writing about you, allowing the precious moments of you and me to burn even more deeply into my heart. I'm holding this lump of cotton, all stitched together by a special someone in El Salvador. If he only knew how much he was giving someone when he put his calloused hands to work to make this simple T-shirt. I'm sure it didn't seem like much to him. Just another T-shirt. He stands in the same dull factory everyday and makes the same smooth T-shirts everday. Of course in his mind this one looks just like the hundred he made yesterday. But it's so not. This one's so different. It's so much more than a T-shirt. It's yesterday's memories and tomorrow's promises and today's comfort..So thank you El Salvador =)