The One Coat

One coat, resoled boots, a relining in the spring, a cobbler who knows your name and a tailor who has taken the same seam in twice. Everything else you own is a support act and it shows in the photographs.

You call it discipline, and some of it is. The rest is a fear of choosing again, because choosing took eleven months the first time and you would rather wear a thing to failure than sit through that twice. People read the repeat as conviction. Half of it is avoidance.

The coat has your shape in it now, at the elbows and across the back, which is the one kind of fit nobody can sell you at the counter.