1. Blue cotton panties. Finger down the front. She had wondered most about the taste of her.
2. She didn’t seem like a thong girl. Or the crotchless type. She surprised him with a pair of the invisible kind.
3. A line of tiny hearts that ran around the waist. He saw them tonight when she was walking in front. She knew without looking that he was looking. She let him know later at the car. Her lips lingered at his ear. She pretended to have a question.
4. Her panties gathered into a pink flower at her ankle. She didn’t want the girl to move. She wanted to remember. One day when everything was taken from her. That’s when she’d see this flower again.
5. Their bodies were pasted together between the fourth and fifth floors. Her panties were lying across the stairs below. Her panties were giving his underwear a goodnight kiss.
6. She plucked a red fuzzy from her bellybutton. She held it up between her fingers. It reminded her that the red wool blanket had frayed, much like her Catholicism.
7. Her purple swirled panties were his favorite. The swirls pulsated. Sometimes they moved clockwise.
8. Her panties drawer was an argument of moods. The everyday coiled together in front. The lacy, the frilly, resided in a rear compartment, divided by cardboard slats. He wondered what it would take to get the good stuff added to the everyday rotation.
9. She still tasted the girl in her mouth years later. It was not unlike the experience of ex-smokers. Desperate cravings for the thing that almost killed them, decades after quitting.
10. His thumb found the scalloped elastic waist, somewhere at the bottom of her jeans. Finally, he thought, finally, not thinking transcendence.
11. She put the oversized granny panties, the Victoria Secret low-rise Cheekinis in the same washer. Thirty minutes in cold, twenty minutes on gentle: she folded them into tiny squares. Separate piles.
12. She never gave a girl the chance to unwrap her. She was a sex-positive feminist who liked to rip off her panties. Up went her skirt, off went whatever she was wearing down there. Often without notice. Sometimes in the middle of the stairway or during previews at the movies.
13. She told girls she was a witch. Her body was a magic spell that enjoyed wrapping its legs around necks.
14. He felt embarrassed when she made fun of his underwear. He didn’t respond in kind when she turned over later, a tiny cigarette burn hole on her left cheek. He was more disturbed by the story he imagined.
15. Her fingers were cold. She mistook her shiver for excitement. She pulled the white lace toward her knees.
16. “I have underwear older than you,” she said. He laughed. He had never considered mathematics beyond the number one their bodies made. Doing it in hotels was a new thing for him.
17. He walked into the morning bathroom almost stepping on her panties. Last night between them was weird: friend of his ex-girlfriend, temporary roommate, possible paramour? He left that afternoon. He was glad he never found out.
18. He went on wearing the pink ones even though the boy said he didn’t like the pink ones. It was his way of reminding that there was one channel the remote control couldn’t change.
19. He had been wearing cotton panties since he stole his girlfriend’s in sophomore year. When the salesperson asked if he was shopping for his wife, it was easier to nod than admit he was looking for a replacement for the pair he was wearing.
20. That night they held a funeral for her orange panties. The orange panties she had worn their first night together. The orange panties that had torn clear away from the elastic. She held the panties in a ball above her head. She asked the girl to say a few words before she let them tumble into the trashcan below.

William Lessard has writing that has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, NPR, Prelude, Wired, People Holding. His chapbook Rembrandt with Cell Phone will be published by Reality Beach in May. He co-hosts the Cool as F*** series in Brooklyn.

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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