Nothing to Declare

Nothing you are wearing carries a name. Dark trousers in a wool that comes out of a bag flat, a shell in black or olive with no marks anywhere on it, one shoulder bag with one zip, a cotton tee washed forty times into submission. You have never once been the reason a queue slowed down.

The uncomfortable part is that the clothes are not doing most of the work. The passport in your hand is, and the plainness you have practised is a costume like any other, chosen carefully to look unchosen. You are still dressing for an audience. It just happens to be one holding a stamp.

It reads as discipline, and mostly it is.