Laundry / by Christina Rosalie

A solitary plastic chickenfalls from among the denim and fleece; the lint trap is full again. This thing we do: wearing clothes, then washing them, goes on forever. Sometimes I like to imagine (at the a red light next to a Mexican boy with oily cheeks who is driving an El Camino, or walking through one of those superstore warehouses, where everything is wrapped in plastic including the last of summer’s succulent watermelons, each green globe swaddled in cellophane) everyone naked or feathered, or adorned in something less fretful and persnickety than the clothes we need so many of (rain boots with polka dots, and heels that sink into the soft sod as we try to run towards our friends at parties, and also negligee and belts and jackets made of wool or down) but we are human; adept at hiding things. Notes, lipstick stains from kisses, favorite marble; the small small bits of other people’s hearts and thoughts; ourselves. We are thieves, mimes, fakers with our clothes all pressed or stained, our laundry bulging with the remnants of things that tumble out unexpected, or get lost.