Amanda Mercedes

Figuratively Speaking

My shirt is neatly folded on the stool, demurely hiding my panties and leggings. From the exam table where I sit, paper crinkling on the inhale, crushing on the exhale, the olive knit looks alive, a patch of moss growing a bed of green atop a metal blowdown. I wore it for our first date, when I met Alex at the airport and he presented a notebook wrapped in butcher paper emblazoned with the nickname he’d called me on the phone every day for months: “Pookie.”