I sold a dress this morning.
Which is to say that two days ago I soaked a dress that I hadn’t worn in two years in a bath of warm water and oxygen bleach, and that yesterday I let it fly in the warm breeze of my rooftop laundry line, and that today I secured a loose button and stitched up a fallen skirt lining. It means that I took photographs of the dress against a white apartment wall and described it in detail, including the slight New York City-colored sheen along the bottom hem that even oxygen bleach and Brooklyn sunshine couldn’t lift. It means that I wrapped up the dress in brown paper and tied it off with ribbon and shoved the parcel into a plastic envelope saved for the purpose. Later, I walked my parcel to the nearest post office, which required a dash under the BQE where the crosswalk is blocked with road debris that no number of calls to 311 makes disappear.