For We Omit the Unimportant Moments
Today I will try to get my laundry
before the buzzer sounds, if I don't,
that will be my failure as I lie in bed.
But first, I will borrow plastic hangers,
to hang still-warm shirts before they wrinkle.
For I am twenty-one, this is my stunning
autobiography, my youth, folding socks
the way they were never meant to be
folded, my shocking rebellion
against elastic and hard water.
I'll be doing this when I'm fifty,
emptying lint traps, because I
don't intend to make a lot of money.
So I'll stand then as I do now,
thinking of my posture, wondering
if that's a proper noise for a machine
to make, if, perhaps, it is in need of repair.
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