My Clock Pants (after Vallejo), by Renee Waller

​My clock pants cripple me. I can never get them off even when I try to break them with a hammer. I try to run out of them, away from them, but nothing works. I'm trapped, entangled in a fabrication and no matter how much I grow, I never outgrow them. The sun tries to give me directions to its house. Out there my pants can't exist and then I can be free. Every day for a good twelve hours the sun keeps trying to help me but on the thirteenth hour it gets tired and gives up. I stay glued to Earth waiting for the sun to show up again. My clock pants limit me and often scare the sun away. My clock pants know I'm trying to get rid of them and they can't stand the idea. Jupiter helps my pants by putting me to sleep so the pants can grow tighter around my waist. I desperately shoot a bright red bullet wanting to pierce the fabrication but it doesn't work. I'm trapped in time.