Lewis Buxton

WASHING MACHINE

my hands smell of washing powder 
and you    you coming 

home hits me in the eye like the toggle 
on an anorak         I hold the crumpled clothes 

of your hands         my place is here
waiting for you        as you walk 

through the door holding your tiredness 
whilst I’ve been saving up 

stories too long for texts or poems 
I wash your shirts 

& delicately place your underwear
on the clothes horse like it’s a secret 

I make you dinner then wipe down 
all the surfaces        the recycling bin 

sings out of tune as I roll it to the gate 
accompanied by the first notes 

of the washing machine     you are all 
I’ve ever had attic space for     you fill 

the drum of my heart with your clothes
I propose in water rings on coffee tables 

whilst washing dries on radiators        
in the aftermath of arguments         we try

 to remember a time before all this 
but that’s like trying to remember second hand furniture 

when it was new    we are worn 
by each other’s fingerprints 

our closets open and we swap skeletons 
I wear your shirts and you swing 

through the day in one of my cardigans 
I find you

 most mornings wrapped in foundation dust
& sunlight 

I can’t tell your footsteps
in the next room 

from the thundering clothes 
in the washing machine     so when you pass me 

a shirt    a pair of jeans         I watch 
them spin next to mine    and think 

this is ours    the sexy bits & sweating 
out of running clothes        pink rising 

in our cheeks     the white wash coming out 
dyed yellow by one bright sock

Born in 1993, Lewis Buxton is a poet, performer and arts producer. His poems have appeared in The Rialto, Magma, Ambit and Oxford Poetry. In 2018 he received the UEA Literary Festival Bursary and was named one of The Poetry School and Nine Arches Press’ Primers poets. He is a Norwich Arts Centre, BBC Norfolk & First Story artist-in-residence. He currently lives in Norfolk.