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Dress
This red dress is my favorite and I wore it the first time for a man who didn’t deserve such care. As I took it off and hung it up at the end of the night, I noticed a small hole in the seam at the back, near the zipper. I shrugged and hung the dress in my closet. Later, maybe, there would be a person who deserved my needle and thread and care to sew up that hole and wear the dress again.
Nine months later, the universe birthed that man to me. I dug around in my drawer for a needle and thread. I found gray thread to repair a hole in a red dress. “Are you really going to use that color,” said my mother-in-my-head. “Yes,” I answered, threading the needle the wrong way and doing all sorts of unlikely stitches. I wore the dress to go hear a concert of music written by this beautiful man, this entire man. I was beautiful. I was whole.