those pants

I am obsessed with a pair of pants. They were, more specifically, Wal-Mart specials, a dank navy color, that navy with the mildewy-green underpainting. Fake navy. Cheap navy. They were men’s pants, cotton, zippered, with wide, straight legs.

I don’t know what happened to those pants and I don’t know who I am in the mirror.

I thought I would always be the same person, the person who wore those pants. I like this person, me now, but I don’t know how I got here. I went to bed in those pants; I woke up in deep, frightening, infinite navy pants, corduroys, feminine. Low around the hips. Tight right here, and flared down there.

Please tell me where I came from. I hear stories and I have lost whole pages from my books. Frame to frame if you move me slowly enough, I am still her. But fast-forward me and in a few seconds, where am I? Who am I?

This loss of identity is nothing new. I have cocooned and chrysalised many times. It’s not even heart-stuttering anymore. Just lonely. Soon I will have pushed enough away to be someone else entirely, to find that my personal revelations are inscrutable even to my closest friends.

Then can I have my pants back?

About Halsted M. Bernard

Halsted, a/k/a cygnoir, does stuff with words. Her favourite things to do with words are keeping this diary, writing stories, and organising information. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, two cats, a few gadgets, several fountain pens, and many books.

Posted on 8 Sep 2001 in Diary