i bought a
pair of pants
designed for,
marketed as,
“women’s”,
to save about
thirty dollars.
they fit me
well enough,
me,
designed and
marketed as
“man”,
so it seems
my shape is
not so far
from that of
woman.
i wear the pants
comfortably,
i don’t always
wear my shapes
with the same comfort.
the climate
here
is often
very humid.
no
it is not often
hot,
rarely ever is it
hot,
but it is
most always
humid.
the covers of
paperback books
curl.
flipping them,
resting them
on front cover,
then back cover,
i let the round
earth and
its gravity
pull them back
to versions of flat.
bleached white pages,
still warm from
the printer,
make themselves
shapely
in the thick air.
they must be
shuffled and
stacked,
shuffled and
stacked,
to keep them
from collapsing
in on themselves.
curling
onto themselves.
wrapping
themselves
into
themselves.
there are mountains
here,
in this humid
and rarely never
hot climate.
mountains
that are not really
so tall,
yet
they explode
up from shoreline,
giving their
shape
a dramatic flare.
i wear
women’s pants
and am sometimes
envious
of the shapes
of mountains,
sometimes envious
of the shapes
of human bodies
that the mountains
contain.
human bodies
walk up these
mountains,
climb up these
mountains,
wander in
and throughout
these
mountains.
the effort
makes many shapes
of a human body.
sometimes
i wish my own
shapes
were different
than they are.
the climate
here
is humid
and generally
cool.
the climate
here
allows us to
make ourselves
into many
shapes.
there are
a lot of
shapes
here
on this planet,
and really,
only a few.
our shapes
are different
from each other’s,
and
our shapes
are really
mostly the same.
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