doing my laundry at 3 am reminds me
of my mother clipping her plants
brown leaves sinking to the floor with
the chemical assurance of sweat stains
leaving clothes. the circular motion of
living things encapsulated in the water
cycle and washing machines
the shirt will be clean again just as
love-in-idleness will grow again,
purple potted flowers recalling
literature’s purplest prose, pretentious like
nerds sitting on the field at the end of the
school day, picking blades of grass to
throw at each other, content knowing that
they won’t have to get the dirt out
themselves. growing up makes me
consider everything around me in ways i
would never have thought about apart
from earth day news. such strange
emotion: looking at the rain-mulched soil,
reading about love-potion-plants, hoping
for hermia and helena to leave what has
been written and fall in love with each
other, weaving flower crowns they could
leave me the pattern to conveniently find
five centuries later for botanical attempts
at flirting. help a girl out, won’t you?
sangria (she/they) loves writing little in-jokes in her poetry for all to see. She has two cats and a hammock. You can find them @expirationdays on Instagram.