A sock without its pair

Found under the third dryer from the door, ribbed cuff facing out, the sock conforms to one of the two known types left behind in a laundromat: it is either a child's, striped and cheerful, or an adult's, grey and unremarkable, and this one is the latter. Forty-one shades of grey exist by feel alone, distinguishable through the fingertips of anyone who has spent enough time with textiles, and this sock registers as the twenty-ninth: worn soft at the heel, still faintly warm from a cycle it did not ask to survive alone. Its pair is presumed elsewhere, possibly folded into a basket three towns over, possibly still circulating the drum of a different machine entirely, possibly gone. The elastic has not yet failed; give it two more washes before it starts to slouch. What distinguishes an abandoned sock from other lost textiles is its total lack of ambition: it does not travel, does not advocate for its own recovery, simply waits on the ledge above the folding counter where someone, out of some obscure decency, has propped it toe-up so its owner might recognize it at a glance. Few do. Whether it eventually reaches the lost-and-found basket or simply ages out of relevance on the ledge appears to depend entirely on foot traffic, a variable no one has thought to measure.

Sig. Lundqvist