I wonder what a talk with my ex-fiance’s first wife would look like.

Rachel Blum

I imagine she and I are doing laundry together.
Sorting whites, darks, and colors even though we will toss them
in the washing machine just the same. The soapy water will cover
red panties which will bleed dye on the white shirt, making it a pale sort-of-pink.
We tell each other

It looks kind of pretty.

Before she hands me the fishnets she’ll say
              I remember these.
Her fingers slipping into holes, knotted at the edges,
giving a tug like she’s a fish caught at wild sea. She’ll tell me
            I wore them when I met him.
            I’m surprised they’re still holding up.
I take them and toss them in the dark pile.
I won’t tell her I wore those fishnets too.

I hand her dirt-black-bottomed socks to put in the whites
Do you know how to use bleach? I ask her.
            I’ve used it to scrub some shit out of my floor, she says.

I picture her down on her knees.
Her lip swollen-fat covered in a bruise that looks like lipstick,
her hair pulled back and every time she scrubs forward a piece of hair falls,
so she scrubs and scrubs until the cloth becomes tangled strands in her hands.

She tells me,

            “Iron and chlorine” is my favorite perfume.
like it’s a guilty secret.
I love the smell of gasoline, I tell her.

Neither smells like clean, neither smells like free.

I’ll pick the laundry basket up, holding it on my hip
like I’m carrying a child.
She watches me dump all the clothes
in the barrel. We pour bleach in, detergent. The water rises.

Our faces melt and merge in the reflection
of the soapy water and it might look like we are swimming

together in the waves and tides of fabric.
I let the lid slam.

I want to offer her something to eat.
Do I take her hand? Do we confess our own sins?
Do we talk about him?
            How about a drink she says.
I just want coffee and she makes me coffee,

I tell her,
He loved us both the same I think.
and we both know what I mean.
We sit silently together at the kitchen table.

Then she cleans the spilled drops from my cup,
taking a wet rag and wiping down the table.
I can still smell a tinge of bleach, and it makes my eyes water.

I don’t know where to go.

            You’ll still get there, she says.

She shows me how to stitch and mend. Cut and sew and throw away clothes
that can’t be saved

            It’ll be a while, but that’s okay.

We take the wet wash and
now we are hanging a cacophony of color to the clothesline,
bed sheets blowing hit us from behind

our shadows look like we are flying.