Load the Dishwasher please, Love Mom

A poem by Sequoia Ramirez - Issue No. 4 | Winter 2023

I've spent many weeks questioning when it started;

The mold culminating in my skin with a stench poignant enough that I'd call attention

Old movies I put on so my son can meet the girl who's no longer here in lost fingerprints on

unwound tapes

Flicks like Jimmy Neutron where the parents are abducted and the first thing on a child's mind is

to make an absolute mess of the house

But now as an adult I compile a todo list filled with chores I'd rather bleed than pay in time of

mine that seems to run away in minutes rather than miles

And I think to myself, when will a mess feel safe?

When will I carve my name into the calcified dirt on the floors and say it was mine to make and

mine solely to clean up?

When in my youth did I roar the cry of my mother?

When did our mouths become one as we shouted over pillars of todos?

My mother who constantly chased a clean finish that wouldn't stay pure enough to capture my

pearly white smile for the next morning

I went from a hoarder to an addict of perfection and revolting at the sign of a full sink

Will you load the dishwasher for me?

Please.

And will you give me time to sit still long enough to catch the whispers in the wall that tell me

somewhere around these parts there is a loose woman still

A wild woman

A woman who comes home to that same day old take out and the bottle of wine unchilled and a

couch unmade and calls it home

I think I skipped her time stamp and signed my name on the dotted line encrypted with legacies

of do gooders and housewives who suffered for the desires of a man

But what man am I suffering for?

What house is mine to keep when I myself have never been a true kept woman?

My finger beds bleeding from opening bottles

And ankles sore from pouring your wine across acres of regrets

Will you load the dishwasher for me?

I've grown tired,

I've grown weak.

But clamor for the voice that screams in echoes of yesterday.

If I hoist that girl from yesterday’s dream, will she fulfill the promises of tomorrow?

Would she load my dishwasher?

No.

Because she’d snarl at the very idea.

She’d bark,

“Why the hell are you loading anything?”