His Jacket on My Chair

There is a jacket on my chair that doesn't belong to me, and this is how you know my life has changed: I haven't moved it. Three months ago I would have hung it up or folded it or felt some small disturbance in the order of my rooms. Now it sits there like a claim— like a flag planted on a country that didn't know it was waiting to be found. His jacket smells like him— something between coffee and the outside, the particular weather of a person who walks everywhere because he says the bus is for people who've given up on thinking. I don't agree with this. I have told him so. He kissed me mid-sentence and I forgot my argument, which I suspect was the point. The jacket stays. The jacket has opinions now— it drapes itself across my morning like a soft, crumpled promise that he'll be back for his pockets and for me— in that order, probably. I've made my peace with that.