Between the things I cannot say and the things I cannot do, lies a world of things I wish you knew.

I found your old denim jacket the other day, the one with the band buttons and the back with Aztec print over. The one I spend my childhood waiting to fit across my shoulders.

Instead it hung on me like a burden, something I couldn’t live up to. I wanted it to be proud of me, but that’s something jackets just don’t do.

I hoped that maybe I would grow into it with time, that there would come a day that it would fit. But jackets can’t tell time and they don’t have a lot of it.

As long as I can remember the button on the breast pocket on the left side has been gone, leaving the flap there hanging so it couldn’t be closed. It was always open and everything you put in there was so easily lost.

I memorized every detail of it, from the collar to the broken seam on the wrist. And even though I never got to wear it, it was always something that I missed.

Since I never got to use it, it never kept me warm, or felt too cold for me to wear, a perfect symbol of a father that was never really there.