Susan L Leary

On Sundays, I Do Laundry

& there she is—a girl, hidden
inside the rhythmic tumult of a river. As the sun
pours into the kitchen, I take inventory
of a life, her cotton dress breaking
into a meticulous shade of yellow. Water
rushes empty of sound & I am
reminded of the woman in that story who stands in the same
place in her apartment for hours, just
staring ahead. Of how she got there, I am not
to be trusted: a nameless girl must remain
nameless, though am I the girl or the one who refuses
to name her? What is to be freely
explained again tumbling past, then briefly
a hand fitting snug inside my head. & what is the head
without the mouth or the heart? Without the corpse
clad anonymously in dirt? A see-through dress
without pockets? There are more details to the scene: a rubied
horse, a pristine scrap of fabric, a knife
bent atop the river. So I speak
to myself about my body. Touch it to know
it is mine, the hidden-ness a hair shy of being treated
unfairly, or so I am told. & this is what I love
about the rotating dark, about a loose
button, about the water weaving into sunset &
then the sunset & then god: a warm body retrieved from
the flowers, a thread unraveling as it is freed.

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Susan L Leary is the author of five poetry collections, including More Flowers (Trio House Press, forthcoming 2026); Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, July 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser to win the 2023 Louise Bogan Award; and the chapbook, A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Smartish Pace, Crab Creek Review, The Arkansas International, Harpur Palate and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN. Visit her at www.susanlleary.com.