GloPoWriMo 2020 Day 1: Iron Synthetic Fabrics On Low Heat

Prompt:  Write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling, or shopping for socks, or shoveling snow, or teaching a child to tie its shoes.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing that the prompt for today was already hard for my brain. Regardless, it took me a while (and a shower, why is it that poetic muses always show up in the shower?) to find something relatable to write about.

So I wrote about ironing. Which I don't like. Hah!


Iron Synthetic Fabrics On Low Heat

I iron my life the way I iron my clothes:
high heat with a will and infrequently, scrubbing out creases
like ex-boyfriends and detested relatives

forgetting that synthetic people, like synthetic cheap fabrics
are high on irritation and low on melting point -
(damn it, another scorch mark)
that water is a gentler persuasion for stubborn creases
than fierce unrelenting heat
that all the ironing in the world won’t get every crease out of a life -
worn, wrinkled, wrung like fine cotton.

Every night I fall asleep and every morning I forget
that I’ve sworn, sworn by all heaven and earth and pink pigs
to do things differently.

Every morning I wake up, iron my life (or not)
burn my fingers again (or not)
shake my life out, and put it on.

They say creases smooth out with wear and time.
Creases be damned.

It’s not origami where Corner A must match Corner B - 
gridlines of ordered architecture folding in, pushing out
collapsing in on themselves into a preset design:
a  mathematical universe.

I’m lousy at ironing anyway.