Sleeping In Men’s T-Shirts

It cannot be clean. That wouldn’t do. The fabric might still remember his skin, but it’s absorbing the taste of yours, and the residue of the day — the sweat and hair and loosening of cloth — begins to transfer. His scent lightly grazes your breasts and outward curve of your belly, barely hinting at buttocks until you lift your arms to stretch. Then you’ve claimed something by revealing, and revelling.

You claim a piece of him by plucking the discarded tee from the floor and sliding it over your torso. You say, “My nakedness is yours, but your coverings are mine.” An intimacy more than bare chests creating shared sweat is implied. You’ve taken his body, his bed, and the space he inhabits and given it curves.

Sometimes, though, the act of taking his place means yours is vacated, abandoned, supplanted. His wardrobe does battle with your identity; you’re a girl playing dress-up, a woman in a girlfriend’s clothing, and in the morning, you’re introduced to the roommates as a friend, if introduced at all.

Take care with his t-shirts. Let them elevate you, embrace you, weave an entrancement over you so the body he’s ravished with hands and mouth will also be ravished by eyes.

Do not let yourself be ravaged.