The Sunday Poem: Laundry by Mary Jean Chan

For a long while, time froze within

me and without. I lived each hour

in a palindromic loop, measured

my energy out in coffee spoons,

wondered if I might make one

trip up the stairs or three with

the laundry. One day I realised

that writing gave me more than

it took: a metaphor well-wrought

is one step into a room where sun-

lit laundry lies neatly on the bed, tea

is brewing gently and it is time to rest.

Mary Jean Chan’s books include Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa book award for poetry. Chan co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) and is a departmental lecturer in poetry at the University of Oxford.

Illustration by Chris Riddell