If Dresses Could Dream...

We walked through the cotton fields and the woody heads leaned and toppled from their stalks. Cotton is pure white, colorless, each fiber stoically rejecting the colors of the rainbow. It is the semen of our clothing, bursting forth and dripping down its branches. My cotton dress paid silent respects as the branches caught my hem and wondered about this offspring. Woven and printed it must have been as unrecognizable as a tattooed teenager, yet a frayed thread gave itself away and I imagined a tearful reunion. My dress had no idea of its origins, these heavy white balls oozing grace and laziness, only to be describe by words like "undulating" and "sensual"...but they are just fibers. Oh! but the way they tangle and matte in the branches! Cotton is wild, it bursts! It flows! And my cotton dress paid its respects. On my way out I wondered if it wanted to stay, saw the simplicity of its ancestral heritage and longed to be reduced to fibers and seeds, dirt and an absence of color, in India, under the sun.