I don’t know how to be in love. Is it a prerequisite for doing someone’s laundry?
For folding the jeans, pajamas,
tucking bra straps behind the cups and lightly placing them over the others
for twisting the neck of the shirt ever so slightly around the tiny hanger hooks
because we were too cheap to buy the velvet-lined ones?

I remember when I hated doing my laundry. Now I do it for both of us
(and I still hate it).

Remember when you’d wake up on a Sunday morning
and find a pile of clean clothes at the foot of your bed?
How your mother placed them there ever so softly at 7 AM
so she wouldn’t wake you—
so you could get one more hour of sleep after a long week of homework and soccer?

I throw your clothes on the bed—sometimes a sock smacks you in the face.
I don’t know how to be in love.