Love and Laundry

In Sorting Laundry by Elisavietta Ritchie, the speaker makes metaphors comparing her love to doing laundry. The speaker wants to bring this person into her life, like she folds clothes.She goes through the rest of their lives like she folds the rest of the laundry. They have dinner, they share and chase their dreams, and they develop a respectability for themselves. The poem then shifts from a light-heartened and lovely tone to a more sad and depressed tone. They cannot throw away bad habits and features about themselves. They start to fight and grow apart. Eventually, the speaker discovers an affair: "the strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover" (Ritchie, 842). The speaker does not want to left alone and would be forced to fold her own clothes. The mountains of unsorted laundry or the joys and adventures to come would not be able to fill the emptiness that she would feel.