far

Fiction

Out to Dry

Roxy Overcash
issue six

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Dirty Laundry 

10:00 am 

Muddled clouds shed their tears over a dreary day of rest. Sunday means take your week’s prescription and bathe in the puddles. In the corner of my eye, I notice what’s been left behind. The dirty laundry is now on my mind, but I’ll stuff it further to the back. Cyclical daydreams are precursors to living nightmares, and Sunday is just another peak. I’m towering over the future, dreading Monday. I want to hide the load from my periphery. Forever and ever is fertile. Certain constants run through, bound with the thickest thread. Somehow, these weekend hours are woven together with pricking twine. 

My limp limbs are glued to the sheets. I’m competitive, in a staring match with used towels and sweat-stricken tees. Shake, shake, shake. Erratic ants will settle under my skin. I wasted water letting it well up against my eye. If I blink a couple times, I can start to digest the morning. The clothes size me up with laser pointer precision. The red dots cling to the gaps in my narrow narrative. Take a beat since I blinked. I’ve lost to the load. Simply avoiding it will make my piles Appalachian. I’ll tie my hair up nice and tight. The strain keeps my gaze taut as well, forced to focus with puppet strings for my forehead crease. 

Down to business is as it goes. I wonder if I’ll even remember my trip to the machine. The elevator compacts me as I float beyond each level. I’m oblong, yet I seem to never forget the detergent. Thinking about this maddening sequence. Underline: why is the processing of pain purely procedural? Allow me to pay my dues, so I can press a button. Wipe the slate clean, and my rags will be white once more. There’s too much time to think while I wait. I’m dizzy watching an appliance quiver, insofar as it seems to spite me. Now, in spite of me might be the real motivation — another constant. 

The timer’s never quite right, so I abandon the basement. I’m more focused on mourning two weeks ago, succumbing to rendered melancholy. My pillows cushion my fall. Watching the birds flock in a wind gust, I crave solidarity with my wings. You couldn’t ask me what’s wrong. I’m in a sonar search of community like a petulant sailor. A tragic opera couldn’t be heard since I’m deaf to my own longing. I suppose. There’s a stuck feeling when hoarding impudence towards yourself. The batteries for the big B leak; I’m a corrosion in predetermined and present pipelines. 

The big B, my closest kin, scratches the itch. I’m certain Bipolar 1 has nails, massaging then digging at my temples. There’s surface tension. The big B and I resemble Thing 1 and Thing 2. We cartoon mesh together, hunky dory dancing for the sake of readership. I can be found doing backflips to save and to sabotage. 

And so on a sabbath indulged, I am enamored by reflection. Or non-reflection. I choose the warmth in ice burns. The touch of solitude. Playing hooky with the delusion’s grandeur is time consuming. Potent life events are just missed by mere minutes. My romance with depressive deceit renders me motionless. I experience a frame-by-frame depiction of what is or what could be.

I try not to get so lost. In its own right, Sunday brings me back, often looping to where I started. I tango with a cryogenic body, habituated. While I’m down, per the big B’s biddings, I know how the story continues. I’m lucky if I see the epilogue in sight. This time around, it’s just me and my dirty laundry. I want to rewind to the foreword. I want to recite the meaning, to feel the grounds upon where I, in buried snow, should lay. I want the prologue too, if that’s not asking for too much. I wish to relive those outings with my stained sweaters. That “she” probably knew better, given that she was further away from intrusivity.

 

I wish I could stay in this limbo forever, frozen and untouched. It would be better to be bound. Primordial. In this way, I’m found. Articles will show a baby mammoth mummified as a cause for revelry. Others see the greedy bounty in the Ice Age image. Did the end justify the means? An epoch’s idol was unearthed. Its death signifies the sanctity. It knew nothing beyond a frost of the feet. It probably trekked thousands of miles over its lifetime for a statement from the Smithsonian. 

Aside from the means, the end is that the mammoth is dead. As for me, I’m not. Am I not? The dark spits on my light’s grave this Sunday. What’s the date? It could be Easter Sunday for my resurrection. Pathways pave, and I’ll paint my eggs. I wonder if that green washed out of my clothes. Acrylic is more vibrant than watercolor. My pigment is vibrant but only a polymer plastic. Bright hues in my demeanor can be a precarious front. 

I drown in a presence. Not to be mistaken for the present. It’s the kind that serves the me I choose to follow in that moment. I have risen today for the tissue. I woke up just to drift again, and I’ll keep wandering deeper into my thoughts. Command my feet to take me down there. Frankenstein, put the laundry into the dryer. If I let them rest, they’ll get moldy. They’ll be too much like me, submerged in a humid tempest of my making. 

I grab a couple of bras, leading me to ask, “How much water can they hold?” They can hardly bear the weight of my chest. Mulling over B cups and B roll type of revelations. I stare into the chamber trying to find the right words. Monitoring diction, not for answers, but for a droning consciousness.

Sopping 

10:30 am 

For once, I noticed the puckered seams. My Alice in Chains reprint was soaked. The cream sweatpants that saw many depressions were wringing wet. In my somber state, I caressed lace. All of it: sopping. Me now: entrenched. It’s sticky and suffocating. I can hold my breath for exactly 45 seconds. And just that. 

The big B never fails to cast itself as a leech after seducing me into its reservoir. It oversees a wealth of my shortcomings, holding them near to Van Gogh a mirage. I’m forced to breathe submerged in a character arc and the plight of the fall. It’s a blind worship of a jury-rigged vision. 

Scant excuses and carbon toxicity are my bitter oasis. Exoneration may be impossible. My clothes can’t dry themselves, and I can’t begin with rocks stuffed into my pockets. Is it destiny for despondency and eternally drenched clothes? I’m married to notions of dead ends. 

I’m dared to take the plunge now or risk war with credulity. Deeper and deeper I’ll descend until the algae consumes me. It would feel me blowing bubbles then might choose to watch over me, my guardian angel. I’ll wait for photosynthesis, letting it produce my oxygen so divers won’t find me with the fossils. 

I’ll be missing in action. If all else fails, a rogue wave may hear my prayer. I can already see my naked body washed upon the shore. Harsh sunlight scorches a fair complexion and could singe logic. I’d try to analyze the time spent subaquatic. I can’t grasp anything with waterlogged synthesis. 

Alone and bare, I’ll then scurry over hot sand, thirsty but impermeable. I’d rather be ascetic than limitless under a spell. Any chance of liberation would only be achieved through waving a white flag. Limitlessness doesn’t exist. Here’s a symposium of neglect, and surrender was just a grab for a punchline. 

Cease and desist, mon compatriote, Big Betty Bipolar. I address you as another and a neighbor, yet you make me feel foreign taking in the same air. I must now assume a new transfixion. I want to know how you have tailor-made, thick viscosity. You’ve held me hostage. I’m Elmer’s glued to a page and locked in sudsy kisses. Pray tell why I still haven’t left the basement. 

There must be a strategy to your saturation. My melodies sung from emptiness wear me thin. I’m about as hard for you to breach as the shampoo finds it for wisps of my hair. I suffer from breakage, and I’m never going to stop looking for the right words. Once and for all, maybe just even today, we can set the record straight. Is it that your power doesn’t expire or have I sought after this? I almost forgot that my socks are still wet. Imagine the battle cries of bacteria.

Porosity

10:45 am 

That’s it. It came to me eyeing a polyester blend. It’s in my porosity. 

Rapt in tedium. 

Marinated and morose. 

Hunger and hypomania. 

The subject and the predicate. 

The language and the subtext. 

Operation Game with the Broken Heart and Writer’s Cramp. 

It’s tiered as follows: reception, willful immersion, and distractibility. High porosity means liquid gets absorbed quickly. It doesn’t usually happen under watchful eyes. The Woes of Womanhood are now in bold. Trying to accommodate since I was born with breast baggage. A woman can submit to high estrogen. My jeans were too tight before tossing them into the bin. Can’t lock eyes with myself for too long lest I burst into flames. Thus, I’m created anew in effigy. My claim to divinity was a funerary effort, at best, that crowned me with thorns. Blessed with awareness, I’m all-knowing to the extent of what I’ve become or what’s been sculpted. 

I’m materialized in my own canon and measured for the plaster. That medium, as it goes, is quite porous. In memoriam of Saturday, there’s a test, assuming I fit the mold. If the model of myself should suffice, it can be sent out into the waning morning to devise a route elsewhere, anywhere. The beauty of the forethought is that it can’t see outside of itself. Neither can I. My biddings won’t stop me from having to rise to my own occasions. The idol will crack in the heat or be contaminated when it inevitably cracks. If there’s a second after this that’s less bleak, at least it can pass as it pleases. First person. 

There must be a way to evade evolution. I can’t run fast enough from the female or the grief. My source of bereavement is negligible. It’s excavated from every crevice where I can capture the right angle. For now, I’ll savor the word. I’ll bet on being scorched and rebuilt again. We’re so lucky to be able to manipulate matter. When porosity is my enemy, I’ll make sure to soak up anything but the chemicals. I can choose to be drunk on my own chapters or quench my thirst with clean water. Discernment proves to be liquid. 

Before noon, I’ll feel a foundation under me as a conditional treat. I’ll be found stealing an editor’s chair with fingers crossed for a final cut. Surely nothing can be as resolute as a quick change in heart. Perhaps it’s onto the next because next is now’s problem. I can only hope my fabrics agree with a quick dry. Questioning a polyester blend.

Tumble 

11:00 am 

Throw the whites in with the pinks, blues, and greens. I’m color blind anyways, passive among extraneous details. The big B sits back, taking a nap. The sun has started to weave its way through cumulus crowds, and my meet-cute with Faith might be on the horizon. The building blocks of my day’s rationalities are positioned neatly one at a time atop one another. It’s a normal dry cycle, colors and whites alike, and the timer starts again. 

My Womanhood was never fond of Faith, at least the raw version of it. An antithesis. A repulsion. Oil and water. I haven’t had a period in over a year, and I’m more hopeful than ever. In this moment, I have equilibrium. I’m watching the clothes tumble in the barrel as if it would stop if I took my eyes off of it. Dizzied in my melancholia. Sparkling. 

Hope always finds a way to shine through in flashes on the lowest days. For that, I’m grateful. For that, I’m spiteful. There’s an allure. If I follow the light to the end of the tunnel, I never know what might be waiting for me. Sometimes, I’m struck by the glare and forced to retreat. Other times, I’m whisked away further into the spotlight. A stroll into the open air turns into a sprint. 

When my eyes adjust, I’m suddenly an object, resigning myself to sex, war torn checking accounts, and a weak circadian rhythm. Distraught. Going mute to let armies of whims occupy the space. I’m then arranging a myriad of things to start but never to finish. There’s people and places to reach. Never sticks. Once I’m burnt with road rash, I regret ever hitting the ground running.

In the end, there’s silence. An intermission. I’m profiting off the invisibility, my trek into the abyss. Faster. Rough and tumble. It’s disorienting on the way down from perceived grace. Cuffed to a new day. 

I rest easy in the soot, and an excavation commences in the ash. The barrel continues to spin, and the sequence knows to repeat. The trajectory of my fishnet stockings will map itself out. Bottom left corner flush with the window, appearing over and over. I watch it thrash, and I pray that the holes won’t start to gloat. Contrition bubbles up inside as the timer starts to beep. If only those stockings had known where they’d been and which me had been wearing them —which me was indisposed.