Laundry is loyal. Laundry always waits, unlike a hungry friend or a French lover. Laundry needs you like a floor needs a mop. It’s not just work, it’s joy, available for the taking. Lucky you. Nothing smells like a fresh start like a load of whites, tossed in at 3 a.m. after a child threw up, a woeful stuffed lamb tumbling dizzily among the sheets. If bleach doesn’t work, try baking soda. Try Cascade mixed with a half cup of Dawn. Remember to blot and never scrub. Blood, chocolate, and glue usually never leave you, constant as weather, but other stains grow pale, then drift off like ghosts to gaze at the clouds. And though their presence bothered you at first, you forget them so easily, like stray thoughts, like that boy who smelled of mint and his mother’s detergent sitting next to you in tenth grade biology, who held your hand at the movies, once. He had black hair and long eyelashes and fingernails bitten to the quick. What was his name?

Bio: Kathleen McGookey