T-shirt Names

He tugs on my hand. Will we be friends forever? Of course we will.

Names plastered over your shirt. All the friends you’ve made throughout your time here. Each of the people you’ve spoken to most days of the year, over many many years. Each shaping you as you shape them in return. In each name there is a chunk of your identity, who you are. Some chunks are bigger than others - filling swathes of the white fabric, or dotted in multiple places.

They write in your book, a short sentence to remember them by - but in the same breath swearing never to forget. Because how could you summarise a person in a sentence in a notebook? Running through the fields together till you collapsed in the grass. Staying over at each other's houses so late - into the next day! Whispering illegal words in each others’ ears. Falling out and coming back together again.

But even so, as the years pass and you move homes, your identity is shaped by others. Playing video games isn’t cool. Being weak isn’t cool. Liking school is totally not cool. Only so many ideas can survive in one identity without destroying each other. Your old friends' words are pushed out, to the fringes. Still there, down deep. Strands of a happier and easier time. Sometimes you stumble across an old word or memory and something in you rejoices, but you can never go back, never fully excavate the pieces. So it stings almost more than if you had never found the relics.

And now it's time again. At the prom, the lights flashing, music blaring in your ears, making talking difficult. You aren’t supposed to speak to people. Just dance and drink and let go of everything here. There are no shirts, no quote books. Just brief exchanges with those you walk past, wishing them well. Recalling that joke from years ago. Another fragment of your identity. You both dig up matching memories, smiling, then cast it away. You will never speak of it again, never speak of each other again, most likely.

Outside the lights are cooler, the music quiet. You look over at your friend, collapsed on a chair. Two others stand vigil beside you, nodding knowingly. When you leave, your wish list is smaller now, revised. There are only a few people you hope to keep in your life now. It can’t be too much to ask.

But as you dig up the memories of your childhood, the sting is in your throat, and you look, nervously, to the future. What do you see? Are they still written on your shirt, or has the tumble dryer faded them all away?