"Sorting Laundry"

Through a metaphor of daily routine and daily life, the author describes her feelings for her lover. The author's relationship with her lover is very precious and important to her. When the author says that she wants to fold her lover into her life, the reader becomes aware of how deep her appreciation and passion is for relationship. The author incorporates small parts of a household such as pillow cases, sheets, and towels and gives them significant meaning when those items belong to two people in love. The woman in the poem seems so happy, delighted, and captivated by the joy she gets from the little things in life. However, there is a change in tone in stanza fourteen. The speaker of the poem brings up a "strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover". The author then trails off after this statement, so this format and change in punctuation stood out to me. The woman in the poem then talks about how even her daily life would change drastically if her lover left her. The imagery given about the mountain of unsorted wash not being able to fill the empty side of the bed showed how alone the woman would feel without her lover. That picture presented by the author shows that the woman's life without her relationship with her lover would be meaningless. An unfixable void would take the place of her happiness and love. I liked the fact that this poem showed how the simple things in life can make us happy and give meaning to our lives.