The Lace That Remembers Your Touch

I stand before the window where the city's grey morning dissolves into gold, my arms lifted as if lifting a veil of old smoke from my face. The lace at my chest is not new; it was cut from the lining of a coat he left behind in 2019, the year we stopped speaking and started forgetting. I keep it because some wounds only heal when you wear them close to the skin, where they can no longer pretend to be invisible.
Outside, the rain taps the glass like a patient suitor, and somewhere below the umbrellas bloom in slow black petals. He called last night, his voice thin as steam rising from a forgotten cup of tea. I did not answer; I only let the ringtone play until it softened into a lullaby I had once sung to him in a kitchen full of flour and silence.
This warmth is not his, and that is the secret time buried beneath my ribs: it is mine, reclaimed after long exile. To be seen in such light—half-veil, half-lace, the bare architecture of a woman learning to want again—is not surrender. It is archaeology. I brush the dust from every tender layer until what remains is not memory, but breath.

Editor: Antique Box