The Jacket Angelica Cortez
Boxes My mother was sound asleep in her bedroom, the apartment dark and silent. I wandered into the living room and saw the silhouettes of unopened boxes. I turned on the light and sat cross-legged on the floor. Contemplating if I should, I grabbed a box and slowly opened its flaps. It seemed my mother had opened them before without my knowledge. I pulled my grandfather’s faux leather jacket out of the box. A numb feeling enveloped my body. I brought it up to my nose and inhaled deeply. It had a musky, manly smell, somewhat indescribable. It smelled of the times he hugged me. The times I would walk into his small, untidy studio apartment in Brooklyn. The times when I would sit on the stairs of his fire escape and watch him pull a cigarette out of his pocket to smoke, the
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wind brushing itself into his short, black thinning hair as he blew the smoke into the midmorning air. It brought up images that I would never see again. I inhaled slightly the second time, scared that the smell would be gone forever if I inhaled too deeply. Smoke I stood in the shadows outside the tall glass building which housed my college. The chill weaved its way through my jacket. Between my numbing fingers, I toyed with a cigarette. It was a long cigarette, freshly lit. I lifted the cigarette to my lips and inhaled deeply. I was supposed to be in class. I knew our break was long over but I didn’t care. All I could think about was the uneasiness in the pit of my stomach, the longing to walk away from this Christian school and never come back.
