Dress Up

Dresses. The ones at Goodwill, or Salvation Army, that line the shelves like little pieces of candy, waiting to be eaten. Succulent fabrics, a lacy or flowered pattern, the aura of who owned it before like a wafting from a cozy kitchen.

I want them all. I want to try them all on. I want to be a different person in each outfit, pretending to be someone I would envy, someone I would never approach at a party - for fear of being diminished, merely in their presence.

The perfect day is always on the other side, seemingly. But I'd argue it can be found in a dress shop, like when my sister went wedding dress shopping and we were served champagne in those fancy, slim flutes that meant we had made it, to the other side of happiness.

San Francisco on a sunny day. Northampton in the spring or summer; places I can wear lace and have tea on a patio and feel like a million dollars after taxes.

Someone once told me that they took the word "patio" out of the SAT, because it catered to the privileged. I think of my life, how perfect it really is. How I can go to a dress store and point in any direction, and I can own them, I can be anyone in them - that is the power of having options.

Wearing a dress is power. It is saying: I am feminine. And what's more lovely, more wholesome, then that, really?

I think of the perfect dress, and I can't think of it. I would have to see it: shrouded in beauty, like a late night, an evening in the summer months where fireflies dance around us. I saw one last night: a firefly, just one, a solitary beacon of hope in the dark. It is the feeling of being the only one; somehow special, a person who can dance at midnight and everyone is watching, waiting for your light.