Saturday, April 13, 2019

GloPoWriMo Day 9: Laundry List

Write your own Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.” What things? Well, that’s for you to decide!

I couldn't think of a proper list, so resorted to the 'look around, take the first thing you see to your right' approach. Which happened to be my laundry basket, so laundry it is.

DAY 9: LAUNDRY LIST

Uniqlo Relaco ¾ loose pants, four pairs (navy, grey stripes, olive green, white sakura-on-yellow)

Akemi bedsheets, two (blue seashells, white streptococci on black)

Assorted underwear (nude and black except for one zig-zag white-on-dusky rose bikini bottom, relic of a rebellious wish for colour and sunshine against skin)

Socks (black, colourful, tweedy, running threadbare at heels and toes)

Uniqlo tunics and tops (Basquiat, Keith Haring, plain grey, black – work-ready, ubiquitous, effortless)

Lingering scraps of resentment in pockets, caught on hooks and eyes, snagged onto linings

Gossamer depression, fine as spider-lace (so light at times you barely know it’s there)

Thick burlap-brooding depression (extinguishes everything like an asbestos fire blanket)

Deferred dreams, fibres pulped into ragged washi-like fragments that stick to everything and anything (impossible to get off)

Strands of cat fur twisted up with strands of hair twisted up with woolly-fuzz cat purrs

Misshapen lint rolls of sleep, fluff-teased and nebulous at the edges

Jagged sparks of stress static-electricity crackling everywhere

Film of tiredness over everything (slightly gritty, pernicious as cat fur and dust, won't wash out)

Elusive filaments of happiness (but happiness is a filament coated with diamond dust, it cuts through almost everything)


13 comments:

Angela van Son said...

Oh, this line: "
Lingering scraps of resentment in pockets, caught on hooks and eyes, snagged onto linings"

Especially those first six words....

Angela van Son said...

These deserve to ne in a psychology handbook:

Gossamer depression, fine as spider-lace (so light at times you barely know it’s there)

Thick burlap-brooding depression (extinguishes everything like an asbestos fire blanket)

Angela van Son said...

This describes (too) many days of my life all too well:


Film of tiredness over everything (slightly gritty, pernicious as cat fur and dust, won't wash out)

Shuku said...

Angela! Thank you so much! <3 To be honest, if someone had told me that depression could FEEL like those things, and that it wasn't WRONG to feel like that, I might have come to terms with things a looooot earlier than I did.

I think all my clothes have lingering resentment embedded in the fibres by now...

Barbara Turney Wieland said...

What an absolute gem of a poem! Angela picked out all the lines I wanted to highlight, so I won’t repeat, just know, Shuku, that I am delighted

Shuku said...

Thank you so much Barbara! I'm so glad you enjoyed it - tonight was a fuzzybrain night so maybe it's time for bed...

Kerfe said...

But this is wonderful! I love the idea of throwing our emotions into the laundry too. Like in South Pacific "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair" (my daughter and I were singing that the other night, we started with songs from West Side Story and just kept going...)

Also just the idea of a laundry list has so many associations. Well done, all around.

LA West said...

I really enjoy the way this poem leads us from the underwear to what we wear under our skin and how happiness cuts through everything

LA West said...

Not sure why this is showing as LA West(?) it is me Christopher Perry 😳

Shuku said...

Kerfe: South Pacific! I hadn't even thought of that song but you're right...now I'm singing it too!

Chris: Well then now we know! The Superhero generator of the Universe has given you a SuperSekritIdentity :)

Merril D. Smith said...

I'll echo others about the great lines--this one stood out: "Lingering scraps of resentment in pockets, caught on hooks and eyes, snagged onto linings." But being the "cock-eyed optimist"--to get in another South Pacific reference--I'm also pleased to know that the diamond dust of love cuts through everything. :)
Now singing along with you, Kerfe, and her daughter. . .


Shuku said...

Merril, thank you so much! *yowls BALI HAAAAI at the top of her lungs* It's kind of infectious isn't it, all the South Pacific songs...

Angela van Son said...

I love how this post ends up being a party :) :) :)