laundry line liturgy

laundry flutters, butterfly wings, and i peg slow, feeling summer on neck not wanting lawn-silence to end. fingers fumble with wooden pegs and i know it: the sadness of not knowing how to mama in these middle moments. these moments of whine, like a cat with tail caught.

husband is here now, watching me peg, hearing tear squeeze from duct. he always hears. i wipe fierce; he hands me another butterfly wing, baby's blue onesie, and it hangs tiny on the line and i miss him. my womb-heart, asleep in fading noon.

"why is he so unhappy?" i ask. trent is picking up shreds of wood from last night's campfire, a marshmallow, stranded like a white buoy on grass-sea, a pile of paper, gnawed from baby mouth, crinkle of newsprint making happy for a moment.

"he's dissatisfied, wanting to be able to move, and he can't." trent disappears, reappears, hands empty; the sun makes him look like an angel. "it's a good thing. it means he's growing."



without whines, our baby would stay baby. i'm nearing the end of laundry-wings now and i think of my own voice-sad; midnight words flung to heaven like moths to screen door: dreams of open fields, of animals, of gardens leaping green, of big window living and wood-stove warm, and of writing books. spines curling outward, pen dripping ink across my life.

"so i must be growing too," i whisper, and husband smiles. "because you're dissatisfied?" he says. i nod. "i try so hard to be content... beg God, give me peace... i count my blessings..." and for a moment, like newsprint, it works. "but these days, it's all dreams."

"perhaps you're needing to move," he says, and i nod and we stand together in halo-light, the butterfly wings seeming to take flight.





"in their misery, they will earnestly seek me..." (Hosea 5:15)