Laundry is not a thing meant to be done...
Jennifer shares a new poem.
as soon as you have checked it off your list you remove the layers of fabric from your skin toss your clothes into the hamper and then laundry begins again.
after you are down to the underwear with lace hanging from the seam you decide to wear the shirt with the smallest stain because it looks best for the occasion and it doesn’t really stink after all you did Febreeze the hell out of it and even though it feels a little icky on your skin it’s just a few hours nobody will know.
then you get there to the special place that meant you needed to wear a dirty shirt and in the midst of doubt about your choice of shoes you somehow find your lips lingering too long around the face of someone you aren’t supposed to let your lips get so close to.
next your hand tiptoes across the other person’s hand and it feels like autumn leaves in the mountains making you forget who is at home and what pair of pants need mending and what homework is forgotten.
finally your nostrils are filled with unfamiliar aromatics the ones that are flavored with fallacy and need until your eyes adjust to the light and you realize everything here is like butter sitting in a heap of mud even your hand that you jerk away from the other hand is now strange and tainted.
how stupid to think that the icky feeling shirt wouldn’t begin to scratch your skin it is saturated with soot and seeping with shame who are you fooling it needed to be washed like the guilt of that last touch and the house that’s always a wreck and all the other judgements that make the shirt feel weighed down in the first place.
yet those morsels of freedom felt like the stars had sat on the ground around your feet but the truth is the shirt has lint bubbling from the inside and no matter what that shirt must come off and get thrown onto the floor to start another pile of clothes a mound that will never drown your cold damp longing.
Follow Jennifer at writerjns on IG and FB or visit jennifernshannon.com.