"Sorting Laundry" by Elisavietta Ritchie: Imagery

                             In the poem "Sorting Laundry" by Elisavietta Ritchie, the speaker uses many images all relating to laundry.  These images relate to her relationship with her significant other.  Throughout the poem the speaker reveals different aspects of her relationship through the images of laundry.  The speaker talks about the "wrinkles" in her relationship (Ritchie, 841).  This is a metaphor for the problems in their relationship that could be fixed or could be ignored. The speaker also references how they are not tired of each other and that the "seams still holding our dreams" are intact (Ritchie, 841).  But the poem has a shift when the speaker thinks too much.  She begins to wonder what might happen if her lover left her.  Ritchie uses the image of folding laundry to tie the end into the beginning creating another image.