Blue ones.
Gray ones.
And a faded green one I remembered from years ago.
I held one of the shirts for a long time.
Then suddenly an idea came to me.
If Dad couldn’t come to prom… maybe I could bring him with me.
“I barely know how to sew,” I told my aunt.
“I’ll teach you,” she said.
That weekend we spread Dad’s shirts across the kitchen table. Her sewing kit sat between us, and slowly we started working.
It took days.
I made mistakes. I had to undo entire seams and start again. Sometimes I cried quietly while stitching late at night. Other times I talked to Dad out loud while I worked.
My aunt never said a word about that.
Each shirt carried a memory.
The blue one he wore on my first day of high school when he hugged me at the door.
The faded green one from the day he ran beside my bike while I learned to ride.
The gray one from the afternoon he hugged me after the worst day of junior year without asking a single question.
By the time I finished, the dress felt like a collection of moments.
