Inventory of a Borrowed Coat

In the left pocket, a train ticket folded to the softness of cloth, the station name worn through to white— a place someone meant to return to and never did.

The right pocket keeps a button, loose thread still curled around it like a question mid-sentence, and three grains of someone else's beach that traveled this far without a sea.

The lining smells of rain and woodsmoke, of a winter that belonged to a stranger, their shoulders, their hunch against the wind, the warmth they left here without knowing they were leaving anything at all.

I wear it the way the moon wears borrowed light, giving back what was never mine, and when I shrug it from my shoulders at the door the coat keeps the shape of me a moment longer— two strangers, briefly, the same silhouette.