The coat that no one wore anymore.

The window of the old seamstress's workshop was always half open.

Sometimes the townspeople would pass by just to hear the small, rhythmic click of the sewing machine needle piercing the fabric.

As if she were stitching time together.

One day a young woman entered the door, carrying a man's coat.

The coat was old, its fabric worn, and in its pockets it still held the warmth of someone who had left it long ago.

"Can it be repaired?" she asked fearfully.

Her voice was as if she were talking not about the coat, but about something even more fragile than herself.

The old seamstress carefully smoothed the fabric.

She felt that there was a life in it.

Among the seams there was the rhythm of someone's footsteps, in the line of the shoulder there was the memory of a hug, on the edge of the collar there was the salt of two quietly wiped tears.

- It can be repaired - she said. - But it will not be like when it was new.

The young woman bowed her head.

- I don't want it to be new...

just to live on.

The seamstress understood then.

They had brought her not just a coat.

A story. A lack. A love.

She worked on it for days.

She sewed what could be sewn, replaced the shoulder straps, put new lining in it, but she didn't completely cover the cracks.

She left a subtle mark in them, to show that something important had once been broken.

When she brought it back, the young woman just looked at it for long minutes.

She traced the delicate, strange curve along the seam with her hand,

which the old master had left there on purpose.

"Why didn't you completely erase the flaws?" she asked.

The seamstress smiled.

"Because what is too perfect is not comforting.

Only what is human."

The woman then hugged the coat to her, and for the first time in months she felt that the absence was not empty, but filled with memories.

The next day she was seen walking in a park.

She wasn't wearing the coat—she was just carrying it beside her,

with both hands,

as if she were holding someone who was no longer there.

And whoever looked at her understood: love sometimes stays with us

by sewing up the tears of the past and stitching into the present what we couldn't keep.

Because there are clothes that no one wears anymore—but they still keep us warm.