I found the clean clothes exactly where I left them

Dear Delyara, Still in the basket. Still unfolded. Still quietly accusing. What made me feel bad wasn’t the washing itself. It was that in my head, I had already promoted it to “done.” That’s how tired I am. If something has been washed and removed from the machine, some part of my brain starts acting as if the emotional file can be closed, even though there are three whole stages of labour still sitting in a plastic basket waiting for me upstairs. I folded them at half-past nine while everyone else was already mentally finished with the day. That’s what I keep coming back to — how often my day has a second shift hidden inside it that no one sees because it looks too ordinary to count as work. But it counts. My body knows it counts. That’s why I was folding school socks with the face of a woman grieving something larger than laundry.