The Space Inside Me

Denim

The denim of my mom jeans reminds me of home and chocolate chip cookies, eating the dough off a spoon. It reminds me of a forced smile when I pretended that a memory with one person replaced the memories that I should have been making with another. Another who flew away, into places of fairy tales, places whose kings were crabs and harbors were only for the Dutch.

As one leg slides against another, it reminds me of a night spent over a project, barely started, that was due in barely twelve hours. It reminds me of a pencil that I slid, harshly, over the skin of my forearm when I refused to let myself lose. And yet, though I didn't lose an objective sense of responsibility, I lost stability, and sanity, and the ability to walk into a grocery store without panicking when I thought I may have cut someone off. I lost the ability to look into a mirror and continue to breathe. I lost the ability to engage socially without throwing up my effort later.

The holes in my belt remind me of a spring breeze that blew me off the monkey bars, and threatened to take me out of America completely, over a hill and into the sea. I would have watched the whorls of the currents, grey like my eyes and my heart, and I would have dropped in, hoping that one day I would bring as much beauty or more.

The denim in my mom jeans brings with it thoughts of my mother's time, much simpler without the complications that come with every action and reaction being in front of the world to see, hear, judge from opposite perspectives.

If red is a sin, then why do some wear it as though it is a badge of honor, of virtue? What of green? Has it been relegated to the corners of society until it forces its shade to be a tad darker, until it could just barely fit in with black, and become universal?

So then should I, too, become darker and darker until I fade into the grey that becomes black? I would be so universally usable, and known, though I would only be known for my similarity to everyone else, mistaken for others who were also lost in their quest for darkness.

Would I become too black to be human, too focused on what awaits us all, the death and depression and cheap flowers and the sprinkling of dirt left on the box I will lie in? Does that even matter?

Maybe everyone should strive to blend in, simply taint themselves with everyone else until they are indistinguishable, until they blend so seamlessly that one wouldn't know where each ended or began. Then all of humanity would be equal, and known for themselves. All of humanity would be focused, as one, on our collected futures, on our death and depression, the cheap flowers given to our loved ones by neighbors that truly care, they say, they convince themselves, and on the dirt that will be sprinkled on and eventually envelope our graves.

This would distract us from our inability to overcome our anxiety and our insecurity in order to build something better for ourselves, to create something new for everyone else.

Maybe we should all focus on becoming darker so that we don't have to remember how we failed to be bright, how we failed to make our own style, wearing black instead.

But then, why would anyone continue to try? The denim of my mom jeans, the colors hidden in fabric, would be locked away into a closet, and never seen again.