YOU LOSE THINGS
You lose things. Things come and go. And it’s no big deal, but sometimes the smallest thing becomes a repository for some emotional kink you have. A vessel for a sensation or just some inarticulate feeling. Me, I lost a sock. It’s a cliché, but I put the pair in the laundry one day, and only one came out. For years and years I sneered at the idea, did my laundry weekly and never lost a thing, and couldn’t imagine how anybody could. And then. It was my favorite pair of socks. They had been an extravagance. Expensive Banana Republic socks, grey as a banker’s soul but for the soles, which had a riot of thick stripes in wild colors. Delightful. I think of them every time I pull all my other socks out of the dryer now, a year or more later. You lose things. I still keep the lonesome brother sock, somewhere in the bottom of the drawer, against the day I hope for in vain, when I would find the lost sock staticked inside some shirt that happened to fall out of favor that fateful laundry day and has lurked in the back of the closet ever since, clutching my beloved sock in its musty cotton clutches.
