20150908 (independence)

Few will list as a major life-changing 

Event the first time they washed

Their own clothes I was at IU

At Bloomington in my first week 

A graduate student in psychology

I remember taking my clothes in 

A cloth bag to the laundry across

The street from the dorm eventually

Found out how to get soap to use in

The machines converted bills to  

Coins plunked them in sat with

A textbook some notes but mostly 

Watched others so capably load

Wash dry pack converse with others

As if it were the most natural of

Tasks some I thought washing everything

They had but the clothes on their back

Breezily cajoling with friends or deeply

In study so single-minded in academic 

Ambition they sparkled with purpose 

By comparison I was far too formal for laundry

Shirt tie khaki slacks unable to 

Cradle books notes pencils slipping  

The college look I gleaned from 

Recent GQs didn’t fit had I been 

At Brown anywhere east I might 

Have made it probably not

Even there the casual relaxed almost

Bumlike dress of the midwesterners

Revealed my immaturity in social

Conformance so much for the advice

Of advertisers selling clothing to the 

Insecure I felt like a plump chicken

In a circle of Kentucky frying colonels

Any one of whom could have struck 

Any moment but didn’t 

Soon it came my turn

To fill a huge dryer with my 

Waiting spun still wet tidies

About me I spied several 

Young women with whom I could

Have struck up or joined some

Eager banter but my tongue lay 

Pasted to the roof of my mouth by

A glue of dryness if they looked

I turned quickly away drying with dimes

What I’d washed with a quarter it was   

Useless to study far too much life 

Going on around me who of these 

Would be my friends tennis partners 

On Saturday mornings

The buzzer sounded I popped the door

Reached in to feel the wondrous warmth

Of my own underwear 

My shorts shirts begging fold me 

But I learned by watching

In that brief time to stuff

Them back in the bag sort 

Fold later if you must 

Dump in a drawer except the 

Shirts for which you unlike all the 

Others had brought hangers

Despite all the discomfort of 

Seeing myself so out of touch 

On top of all that I realized

I had washed my own clothes and

No longer needed my mother

c. J.S.Manista, 2015