I wore your shirt, it kept me warm

The one that says ‘I *heart* my planet’

It’s even too big for you and on me, I’m swimming. But when I saw it on the laundry pile in my bathroom, I pulled off my old camp shirt with one hand, reaching behind with my one good shoulder and grabbing at the cotton until it was off.

The night was cold, the kind that, after a hot day, makes you say ah, there it is, a summer evening in Santa Rosa. The kind that makes people wear their heavy down jackets in July.

I pulled your shirt on and felt warmer, climbed into bed,

smelled pee.

I’d sorted the laundry earlier but didn’t have enough quarters so the piles sat on my bathroom floor – their dirt and liquids and smells commingling.

Your shirt had taken on some pee from a recent night when my daughter had been playing so happily and so hard that she’d completely forgotten about bathrooms.

It happens.

I pulled my covers up around me and thought

it’s laundry day tomorrow, anyway.