lxxii

“I usually try on at least 20 pairs of jeans before I find something that looks good on me. And even then, I have a trustworthy friend tell me if my butt looks big!”

-Amanda Peet

            Today was the first day of the school year where I felt cold, where I felt like it was a poor decision to not pack any long-sleeved shirts with me, instead reserving the luggage-space for a Nerf gun and my hardcover copy of Watchmen.

            But the brisk, small dagger in the air also means that it’s time to bring out the four pairs of blue jeans that I’ve stuffed into the back of my closet. Four pairs may seem excessive for a heterosexual male but I have my artsy factory-ripped pair, my trendy factory-bleached pair, my factory-hemmed cowboy pair, and my factory-regulated regular pair.

I Sleep in My Blue Jeans

Sometimes,

when I fall asleep,

I’ll forget to change out of the my clothes.

And then the next morning I will be completely dressed

in the same sweaty t-shirt and wrinkled jeans of the faded yesterday.

And, I know it sounds uncomfortable but, recently,

I have had some of the best

seven-and-a-half hours of sleep

of my life.

It is almost as if my mind wants to keep moving

                                                                 walking

                                                                 living

while my awkward body rests on my three-hundred thread count sheets.

And I walk through my always-black-and-white dreamscapes,

interacting with some synapses of my imagination,

those graying illusions of grass

are painted only with a pallid, frayed brush,

dripping with only the most worn-out, tattered shade of

blue.