The Laundry Has Been Clean for Three Hours

August thirty-first. The plan was to do laundry, fold it while it was still warm, and be finished by noon. It is now almost four o'clock and the basket is sitting in the middle of the floor like an accusation. The clothes are clean. I have folded approximately one sock.

I don't know what it is about the last Sunday of August specifically that makes every task feel twice as heavy. The heat is doing something to the apartment, not unbearable, just thick, and I've been moving at about half speed since I got up. I did manage to water Gerald. I ate breakfast at eleven-thirty. I read two pages of something I'd left on the kitchen table before falling asleep on it for twenty minutes. Productive morning.

mid-reach, mid-afternoon, fully committed to nothing

At some point I sat down next to the basket to fold one thing and I'm not sure how long I stayed there. Long enough for the light on the windowsill to shift, you can track time by that in late summer, the way the angle comes in lower and catches the objects differently. The two photographs of my mom, the collapsed bowl, the letterpress card. All of it going golden in the same slow way it does every August evening.

the windowsill and the laundry and the Sunday afternoon that would not end

The laundry is still not folded. It will probably still not be folded tonight. I've made peace with this in the way you make peace with things on a Sunday when you're tired and the apartment is warm and the light is doing what it does. Tomorrow is September. The basket will still be there.