by April Fox

Created on: November 02, 2008   Last Updated: December 20, 2011

It never ends.

A simple thought, and true enough with a houseful of active, messy kids, but somehow on this rainy Tuesday, it seemed to carry more significance than it should. For a moment the pile of muddy socks, worn jeans and frilly pink skirts seemed overwhelming, frightening, as if it might topple and bury her under the weight of the past few neglected days. She could picture herself there, suffocating under the weight of her children's discarded clothing; she hoped she wouldn't end up with one of her teenage son's socks up against her nose. Barring that disgusting thought, she supposed there were worse ways to die than by being smothered under a mound of soft clothes, hidden in the laundry room of her tiny house. She thought someone might find her if her foot happened to be sticking out, tripping the next kid to walk through on the way to the bathroom, and she knew that in all likelihood, whoever it was would simply shove her toes out of the way and keep walking, like they did with everything else. She was thinking it would make one hell of a CSI episode when a voice from the doorway broke into her head.

"Mom. Mom. Mooooom...MOM!"

Her daughter was leaning against the door-frame, looking sleepy and like a little girl again in her Happy Bunny jammies and still-tousled hair. In an hour she'd be back in her skinny jeans, hair perfectly straightened and angled across her face, blue eyes hidden under layers of black eyeliner. She was more familiar to her mother as she stood now, wearing the same puzzled expression she'd worn since birth.

"Mom... what are you doing?"

"Laundry. I needed to do laundry. There were no towels."

"I know, right? I was gonna take a shower last night but-psh-nobody did laundry. Used towels are gross. Can you wash my soccer jersey? Oh and I need you to wash Jonathan's too, he probably wants it back since we broke up. Oh yeah and speaking of broke up, Dalton and his girlfriend broke up yesterday so could you wash my good jeans, the white ones, and my Obama shirt pleeease, so we can maybe hang out this weekend? OK thanks, I have to go call Emma now, bye!"

And in that flurry of words her daughter was gone, leaving behind the faint smell of something youthful and taking half the air in the room with her.

For perhaps the hundredth time, she wished for a window in this room.

On the shelf above the washer she had painted lyrics from a long-ago song, left over from when she was young and still felt vaguely human. For a few minutes she tried to

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