Weekend

Some people despise doing laundry, but I don’t
mind it, and I think we can all agree it feels so good
to engage in something you don’t
mind. To have a neutral feeling. My only two childhood
memories are hearing the song EVERYBODY’S WORKING
FOR THE WEEKEND and seeing the bumper
sticker THE LABOR MOVEMENT: THE FOLKS WHO
BROUGHT YOU THE WEEKEND. I gathered
the weekend is the portion of life that is understood
to matter. Now that I’m grown, I know that just means
sex. THE LABOR MOVEMENT: THE FOLKS WHO
BROUGHT YOU SEX. Though of course
there are other things to be enjoyed. I DON’T WANT
TO BE PITIED said my neighbor, after explaining to me
she hated her children—not children in general,
just her own. Her idea of a weekend
is not being pitied. Is someone else having about her
a neutral feeling. Our neighborhood is overrun
with garbage, and the summer makes it reek,
which ruins the otherwise neutral
feeling I have regarding the sun and the sense
of it on me. It’s not that I think of myself as my own
child—it’s more that I think of my body
as an animal that, having been bred with abandon, requires
a human steward, like those dogs that can’t
give birth without assistance, without someone
snapping on gloves and boiling the kettle
and cleaning the cotton sheets like I’m doing now,
clipping them up to dry in the sun. It feels so good.