Green Jumper

There was a week in late September when the house forgot it was mine.

The light turned sidelong and suspicious, slipping through the blinds like it wasn’t sure it belonged. The hallway stayed cool no matter how high I turned the heating. Even the walls seemed to keep their distance, like they were waiting for someone else to enter the room first.

I didn’t leave. Not because I was brave. Just because no one asked me to.

On the third day, I lit a fire. She’d always hated the smoke – said it crept into her hair, made the cushions smell like sorrow. I forgot to open the flue, and the room filled like a stage before the curtain rises. The alarm shrieked. I stood there waving a tea towel, coughing, laughing without sound.

That night I pulled the mattress into the study. Left the frame empty. Lay there under the window as the moon dragged herself across the glass. I counted all the ceiling cracks she meant to patch. Wondered what else I’d inherited.

The kettle still boiled for two. Muscle memory. I made tea and poured hers anyway.

Left it beside the radio, where the rings in the wood had started to pale.

In the back of the wardrobe, I found her jumper – green, stretched at the elbows, sleeves too long. The one with the thumb holes. I wore it like a question I didn’t know how to ask.

She left things in strange places. A slipper behind the radiator. A list of books scribbled on the back of a gas bill. Half a lipstick, blunt as a thumb, pressed into a tin of buttons. Every drawer was a riddle. Every room, a held breath.

One night, I woke to a knock – not on the door, but everywhere. A storm, low and constant, like a voice speaking underwater. I got up, barefoot, and walked to the kitchen

window. Outside, the garden bench gleamed under the rain. It looked occupied by absence. I opened the door. The cold met me like an old friend I’d forgotten how to greet. I sat. The cushionless wood soaked my pajamas. Somewhere, a fox barked once, sharp, indifferent.

I stayed until the sky paled, until the storm forgot itself, until the bench felt less like a punishment and more like a kind of remembering. I stood and looked back at the house. The light had changed again. It no longer turned its face away.

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About the Author

Dorit d’Scarlett is a Danish/Australian poet and writer ‘of a certain age’ living in Malaysia whose short stories and award-winning poetry have featured in Rattle, Meniscus, Antler Velvet, and many other international literary journals. Her long-form fiction has been long-listed for multiple writing awards. Awarded ‘Artist in Residence’ in Provence, France, she can consequently be found sipping iced Ricard to counteract the tropical heat as she ponders humanity and prose.