When I Wear Your Shirt

Verse 1 Folded neatly in the bedside drawer Between things I wear and things I don't, Faded at the collar, threadbare at the elbows Nothing anybody else would want No famous label sewn inside it No story worth a magazine page Just cotton, buttons, years of ordinary living Folded quietly with age Pre-Chorus But every crease still holds a fingerprint Every thread remembers where you've been Chorus And when I wear your shirt I stand a little taller The hard things don't look quite as hard The heavy things feel smaller Maybe it's the memory Maybe it's the way you loved But somehow in those worn-out sleeves There's still a little bit of us And for a moment, you're not gone You're right here where my heartbeat starts Just an old shirt to the world But a suit of armor to my heart Verse 2 Sometimes I pull it from the drawer beside me On nights the silence gets too loud I don't even put it on I just hold it in my hands awhile And let the memories come around The smell is mostly gone now Time takes even that away But somehow I still find traces Of the person who could always make me brave Pre-Chorus Crazy how a lifetime can survive Inside a handful of stitched lines Chorus And when I wear your shirt I stand a little taller The hard things don't look quite as hard The heavy things feel smaller Maybe it's the memory Maybe it's the way you loved But somehow in those worn-out sleeves There's still a little bit of us And for a moment, you're not gone You're right here where my heartbeat starts Just an old shirt to the world But a suit of armor to my heart Bridge I know it's only fabric Cotton, thread, and time But some things hold a person Long after they've said goodbye And every time life knocks me down Or leaves me in the dark I borrow one more ounce of courage From the ghost inside your shirt Final Chorus So I wear your shirt And I hear your laughter Like a porch light shining through the years I wear your shirt And somehow I remember How to face the things I fear Maybe it's the memory Maybe love works like that Leaving pieces of itself behind In all the things we can't give back So it still folded there waiting Just where you've always been An ordinary shirt to everyone But home to me again