the tapestry jacket
For my thirteenth birthday, my aunt got me a tapestry jacket that looked like a really cool Victorian couch. Wearing it felt like kissing powdered flowers and sneaking through thrift stores to find Molly Ringwald's entire Pretty in Pink wardrobe. I had punk rock Cleopatra bangs that I'd gotten straight by using tape and manicure scissors, an eating disease, and halting, stuttering movements. The tapestry jacket was one of my first forays into practiced couture. Owning the tapestry jacket with the roses and the shadowy leaves was like being one of Mucha's muses come to life, like being the heavy-lidded lashes and sex-sad stare of Marilyn Monroe without the solitary suicide on a bathroom floor.

I wasn't sure how to wear it at first--sleeves rolled up around my elbows or shoved down to my wrists?--and didn't know how to wear it until after I'd lost my consensual virginity (the one that counted, the true physical one, had happened years before with my head turned to the side, tears streaming down my cheeks as I thought, i'mnotherei'mnothere). But this isn't about that. This is about the tapestry jacket with the straight shoulders and how brave it made me feel when I faced down locker-room leopards. I wore the jacket to family functions and theatre auditions. At one try-out, the director said, "That girl wasn't a baby, even when she was a baby." A tear smeared salt on my lower lashes. The tapestry jacket made me strong.

Not a baby even when she was a baby. An almost-adult girl in a grown-up jacket.

Years later, I'd lose the jacket the way we abandon the ancient items of clothing that become our touchstones. I don't remember why I stopped wearing it or where it went, just that I miss it now as if I'd worn it every day from the time I was thirteen until today. Although I adore fashion and play with my appearance, I don't have pieces of my wardrobe that I wear with such loyalty.

The tapestry jacket is gone.