Like laundry,
you look at me
with annoyance.
I am unraveling
in your eyes
and bits of your affection
drop and roll away
like buttons.
We are twisted
as sheets.
Entangled as though embracing
or struggling to escape.
The laundry looks at me with rebuke
the same as I see mirrored in your eyes.
You’d like to see me smooth and obvious
as a flat sheet or a pillowcase
not rumpled, knotted, lumpy
like the fitted sheet which really fits
nowhere.
Like laundry
my existence fails you
and I wonder at the
unraveling.
Ann Latner 21-APR-2009