I packed your shirts away today.

Mom gave them to me after you were gone, too soon, along with a couple of your books, your wallet with those scraps of paper in them recording every pill, every date.  They all need to go to the backs of other people, except this one, this black and white one that I remember so well, your Brylcreemed pompadour on top, the black knit dickey underneath.  The lime green one will be perfect for someone next St. Patrick's Day; maybe they'll put it on a mannequin in the window at the thrift shop.  They'll all get another life, except this one, this special one.  I'll tuck that away in a cedar chest with everything else, to remember. 

I packed your shirts away today.

They've been in that closet forever, years upon years, sitting in dresser drawers along with your Eagle scout memorabilia, the school treasures, the letters home, things your dad didn't have the heart to part with, still doesn't.  He and your mom finally poured a couple of glasses of wine, sat down by the fireplace and burned the suit you were in that last night, the summer after you graduated, when you left too soon trying to get back to them on a road in Michigan, little boy blue.  Your dad still can't part with them, so they're nicely packed and tucked away, in that quiet place where the love still lives.

I packed your shirts away today.

We told you we'd keep your room as you left it, and we did, that you'd always have a home with us.  Your uncle imagined Cosette coming to live with us in Les Miserables and I saw Patrick coming to live with Auntie Mame, while you leaned more toward being Harry Potter under the stairs, taken suddenly to a different home, a different place.  There was love enough for all of us and plenty more, but in the end you had to leave us and the shirts stayed.  They've been hanging there since, aching for new life, and finally they'll get one, on the back of some other little girl who can't afford a uniform to go to school and won't know anything about the little girl who wore it first, who's now sixteen and far far away, a fading memory, a distant dream.