I don’t sleep in pajama pants.
I like feeling the cool smooth cotton
on my bare legs as I doze off at night.
I wear a big ol’ t-shirt my father gave me
when I was a little girl.
Now it has a few too many holes in it.
My father says even one hole is too many,
I say it’s perfect and I sleep like a baby.

My hatred for pants runs so deep
that they come off the second I step through the door,
so deep that my wife had to put up curtains,
to prevent the neighbors from getting a nightly show.
I tend to keep a pair of pants by the head of my bed,
for when guests are staying over
or for the colder nights, or for a night-time air-raid
when much to my despair, pants are necessary
and I can’t walk around my house bottomless.
But of course, the minute I get back to bed the pants come off.

Though recently, I have been wearing pants to sleep.
It’s been an adjustment for me
to not feel contact with my blanket at night.
However, the minute and half count-down
started to pop up too often and feel too short. And while sirens go off,
my blurry eyes try to locate pants and stuff my legs in them.

Somehow, it has become a toss-up in my mind between pants and shoes
and I find myself wanting to pick shoes,
so I don’t have to walk down three flights of unwashed stairs
to a communal shelter, which has also never seen a mop.

So, I have been wearing pants to bed, it’s been an adjustment.