By Mathieu Parsy
You said you were just borrowing the hoodie.
Just cold. Just for the walk home.
Said it smelled like smoke and me and old forests.
You always knew the difference.
You left with more than that.
Took the gods with you.
Took the threads I stitched with stormwater.
Took the protection charm sewn into the hem.
Took the antler button. The one I carved with a rusted nail on the solstice.
You knew what it was.
Then you wore it on livestreams.
“Forest-core,” you said.
Said “found it in my ex’s closet lol.”
You got hearts. You got paid.
I almost forgave you when you laughed in that video—the one where the wind caught your hair just right.
Almost.
So I went to the old stone circle.
The one behind my father’s shed.
The one only the crows know.
Brought dried yarrow, crushed bones, ashes of every word I ever bit back.
Buried a new spell.
Unmade the thread.
Called your name in the old tongue.
The one that splits the throat and feeds the worms.
Day two: your hands started shaking.
Day four: moths nested in your voice.
Day six: your phone cracked on its own, split down the center like a geode.
You DM’d me: wtf is going on?
I didn’t answer.
The hoodie did.
It returned itself.
Damp. Mud-caked.
Left in a ring of salt on my doorstep.
Still warm.
You went quiet after that.
People said you moved to the city.
Started wearing silk and speaking like someone afraid to touch their own reflection.
But the wind still knows your name.
And it shivers when it says it.
Me?
I don’t wear the hoodie anymore.
I wear the cold.
I speak with the crows.
I eat sunlight and bleed bark.
You took the gods.
But they were in the sleeves.
And they came home hungry.
Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera. He now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Your Impossible Voice, BULL, Bending Genres, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Follow him on Instagram at @mathieu_parsy.
MoonPark Review 