musings on laundry and love, a prompt from findtimetowrite.com a poem in 3 parts about 3 very different kinds of love. comments? input? prease?

1.
pops used to get up
around 2:30 in the morning
to do laundry

i had the suspicion
he woke from night-terrors
he was a bad-dream machine

i guess we inherited
all of the neuroticism
and none of the religion

his girlfriend confirmed this, years later
saying he'd dream of me and my brother
going homeless, dropping or burning out

trips to the psyche ward
drug use, academic probation
and emotional bankruptcy

between the two of us
it seems his nightmares
had 100% success rate

before i left home the second time
after the detox but before the road took me in
it was apparent i had brought bed bugs home

he said he didn't mind doing the laundry, believe it or not
there was a time, when he didn't have two pairs of jeans to wash
i resisted the urge to tell him about how familiar that sounded

sleeping in my car in the Salt Pit winters
trying to fill this hole inside me with booze
mania and mayhem, all garments he'd seen

some of my secrets come out in the wash
only to show up later after the fabric dries
but there are still stains he'll never see

those articles i wash by hand, after the nightmares
in the early mornings; in a river behind the mountains
where i hope no one lives downstream

2.
once, when i was homeless
Betty washed my clothes for me, but
i don't think she knew i was living in my car

it's her pick up line i'm still trying to master
i go to bars, play a gig, wait for someone interesting
and say "so... can I do your laundry and make you a sandwich?"

for some reason this never works

i have my own laundry room now
it's just that someone can't ask
for that sort of intimacy right off the bat

you can't help but love someone
when you fold their boxers, i know
because it's happened to me

so no matter what happens, i know she loved me
in that moment, if never before or since
even if my jeans were damp out of the dryer

Betty told me she believes
in gender roles because
she wants to fight to be equal

she doesn't want respect;
she wants to fight to be respected
she says she wants the fight.

i wonder then if i should fight for the rights
to wear pink, collect recipes from current fad magazines or cry
during a movie about high school, just for the fight

when we were kids we both got tattoos
from her boyfriend, the same hand that
i fervently wished was mine

wrapped in cellophane and into the night
my arm swollen in pseudo-meaning
i dreamed of that connection

when she offered to do my laundry i always wondered
if he ever knew about that, and if so, what he thought
about her folding my holey boxers with her delicate hands

3.
cum and blood
are two things that
don't wash out well

cum on black bleaches; blood on white stains
and since i don't wear any other colors
you'd think i'd be more careful