Washing my Ex-Husband's Shirts

I don’t always wash

my ex-husband’s shirts.

These, though, I was meant to –

poetic justice harmonizing

with Calliope’s bemused giggles

and my delight

seed-pearled with gratitude

for the opportunity

to be of service.

This musing, no airing of my own dirty laundry—but a gaze into yet one more crystalline dew ball of dawning enlightenment: dry cleaning doesn’t always work. Some stains we, ourselves, must work on. Let us mull the wetwork role we have played.

The sauce or wine in a goblin’s goblet of acid resentment we threw to pockmark others

with our own pain. The blood we drew – expert technicians plunging needles of nursed rage into raw places. No intent here to diagnose, much less heal.

My intention today, re-tackling

the stains on my ex-husband’s shirts.

Not in penance – although remorse is a key enzyme in atonement’s strange kindness –

but

with raw-kneed humility.

World without end wash cycles

of noble-hearted openness.

Copyright Jenine Bsharah Baines