Sorting Laundry

Folding clothes,
I think of folding you
into my life.

Our king-sized sheets
like tablecloths
for the banquets of giants,

pillowcases, despite so many
washings, seems still
holding our dreams.

Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale,

reserved, we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.

So many shirts and skirts and pants
recycling week after week, head over heels
recapitulating themselves.

All those wrinkles
To be smoothed, or else
ignored; they’re in style.

Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foam
like those creatures in the ark.

And what’s shrunk
is tough to discard
even for Goodwill.

In pockets, surprises:
forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking the drain;

well-washed dollars, legal tender
for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation;

and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold

you brought from Kuwait,
the strangely tailored shirt
left by a former lover…

If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold
only my own clothes,

the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,

a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fill
the empty side of the bed


Elisavietta Ritchie

aie. but amazed →

“The idea of "thrift,” once an American ideal, now seems almost quaint to many college students, particularly those at elite schools. The typical student today is not so frugal. Few know where the money they’re spending is coming from and even fewer know how deep they’re in debt. They’re detached from the source of their money. That’s because there is no source. They’re getting paid by their future selves.“

Education cost reform, anyone?

Just over a week left.

And time to break out into a sprint.

Gosh, where did this semester go? I don’t even know what to make of it. A little sad to be leaving fall semester behind (I’ve always preferred fall to spring), though definitely looking forward to a month of holidays and birthdays and snow and movies and good food and friends I do not get to see enough of.

And now back to endless quantities of work until December 12th at 10pm.

stronger resolve stronger

strength is such a relative term
a give and take of feeling to fiction
strong enough for this world I’m facing
but it all amounts nothing really
when compared with these two arms
holding perspective in suspension
too often, I think
I surrender to these tears much stronger than
my will to be brave in your absence
leave behind trails of tu me manques
and salty wishes for banished
goodbyes

[thankful]

My dad picked me up from Hopkins on Tuesday night without a word. He took my suitcase full of books and deposited it in the trunk, then calmly walked back the drivers seat while reunions took place all around me - the freshman from Bainbridge who I had sat next to on the flight was taking turns hugging her parents, smiles and love swirling around the curbside pickup. But my parents don’t do the overly dramatized reunion hugs draped with exclamations of “Oh dear I have missed you!” I don’t think I could handle that from my dad – its only in normalcy and nonchalance that I can perceive genuine affection. My dad always says, you don’t have to bother with missing the people you love. You’ll always be able to pick up right where you left off. Good advice, that I am not always good at following.

I drop my purse in the passenger seat and switch on the radio. “I’m hungry.” My stomach grumbled. “Call your mom and tell her to microwave some food before we get home,” says dad as he rounds the entry ramp. As if I had never left. It was just another car ride with my dad on a typical Tuesday night, just another homecoming sandwiched between pockets of growing up, another few days of acting like my father’s daughter, in the passenger seat with my past and present racing past the foggy windows.