Laundry day

Remove the silk, the satin and drop them to the floor. I will not enter, nor try to steal a glimpse of your body with the sharp straight lines of elastic cut into your flesh. Stretch your arms above your head and I will imagine you, body free, marks fading, in the sunlight through the dusty window. Put on the faded bluejeans and cotton shirt ... sandals if you want. Here is a washboard and a bar of soap, a galvanized tub with cold water. We’ll carry it out to the back of the house where a pile of clothes waits for your rough justice. Here is a pile of wood and the axe that I will use to split it, dangerously stealing glimpses at you out of the corner of my eye. Scrub the coarse cloth against the washboard. Your breasts move freely within the shirt, straining the buttons, and you start to sweat. Your hands are rough and red in the cold water. I split the logs to kindling, watching you move in your damp soapy clothes, the movements of your body perfect. The axe is silent the wood is done. I lean on the axe, filling my eyes with you and finally you look up, and catch me looking. You smile and take the last of the laundry and twist it over the tub, and toss it into the finished pile, and stand up, and walk to me, and take my work-reddened hand in yours, and lead me to our bed.