The Urge

I am trying to dress with more nerve than I used to. Brighter cloth, harder pattern, a proportion that does not apologize. I do not think the jacket is the virtue. I think the decision is practice. A man who will risk looking foolish in public is rehearsing a larger refusal to disappear. The uncaring universe does not owe a person a silhouette. You assert one anyway. That assertion is what I mean by the right to exist, and I would rather practice it in a shirt I can point at than in a sentence I cannot.

This desk will keep the record of those attempts. It will name the garment. It will not keep a score.