Laundry List

Please don’t do my laundry if you plan to use bleach on my nice linen shirts.

And don’t put my snowy white cotton blouse in with the black blue jeans.

Don’t put the silk shirt in the wash at all.

I just want you to know that I’m sad the background colors on my floral skirt and blouse are dingy now instead of bright.

The towels are no longer green or orange, the whites no longer white although I have to admit you finally learned to keep the red separated from your white underwear.

Bleach spots on the plaids and entire loads of clothes made into rags, clothes pin marks in the middle of my back and chest.

Broken clothes baskets and rust spots from the wet can left on top of our white tablecloth.

Red wine spills and paint and someone else’s lipstick, dirty rags and clothes picked up off the sidewalk.

Baskets of clothes I folded neatly, dumped out on the floor, or opened up and hung around on every open drawer like in the photos of immigrants in tenement housing.

And don’t bother with the dish towels because I wash them in their own load and I always rewash them after you’ve combined them with other dirty things.

I am not a doll, my wool sweaters are washed by hand.

*****

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