What are we folding when we are folding laundry in quarantine
Standing four feet apart,
you take one edge of the sheet,
I take the other.
We walk towards one another,
creating order.
Like solemn campers folding a flag
in the early morning light.
But this is no flag.
This is where we love and sleep.
There was a time we forgot to do this—
to fold with and toward one another,
to make the edges clean together.
My grandmother might have said:
There is always more laundry to do–
and that is a blessing because it means
you did more living
which means you get to do more cleaning.
We forgot for a while
that one large blanket
is too difficult for one chin to hold
and two hands to fold alone—
That there is more beauty
in the walking toward the fold,
and in the shared labor.
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Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Ruhl.
