The day I turned 30, my body changed, or so it felt. I think I still look somewhat the same on the outside. It’s just the inside that feels different. Things started going past shaped and wobbly. I felt like I had lost my youth, that was, until I had more than a couple of men witnessed me. According to them and their naked torso in the moonlight, everything is fine.

And yet, it isn’t. The flame is fading slightly. The light feels like she is dimming, though she is not going out. Perhaps it is because I stopped running for a while. I felt wobbly, as I said, like parts of me might start to fall off.

My grandma is losing her teeth. She tells me it is the worst part of getting old. Bits have you started to fall off. I don’t know what to say to her when she tells me these things, so I just tell her about the ship of Theseus, and how if you take a board off the ship, or replace the mask, it is still the same ship. She is still the same person, just there are a little bits of her missing.

My soul is a Favourbrook coat. The silk-laden one from London. She shimmers in the cold winter breeze, keeping her wearer warm. My soul, like her, is thick and sturdy, velvety, colorful, embroidered, beautiful, magical, haunted. She is regal. I wear her to fancy balls where eligible bachelors line the oak wooden staircases beneath medieval tapestries. I am dark purple, and my velvet buttons are scarlet red, and along my seams are dark green, adorned in a pattern of Irish clover, and the flowers along my sides are orange, black-eyed Susans. I shine. I am not meant for the beach. I am not meant for the sea. In the forest, and through the misty hills of the Isles, I glide protecting someone on horseback. With travels, studies, failed relationships, old firings from jobs, I have begun to wither slightly. My colorings have been fading slightly. My velvet and silk a little threadbare in places. But I was made for a special occasion, this life, this gift of being.

I am perpetually overdressed, and if you look closely between the flowers, you can see the inscriptions handed down to me in Yiddish and Irish, of ancient tongues by gone, and yet, you can take the girl out of England, but you can’t take England out of the girl. She is going places, that coat. She should take another look at herself in the mirror, whenever she is in the world, and try to remember her detailed greatness. Even if her parents went on to make other coats. Even if she was left out in the rain by them once or twice. Favourbrook is not just fabric hodge-podged together. To make her took detail, time, attention. She is unique. One of a kind. Just like “God” put so much care and attention into creating each one of us. She was made for a special occasion.