Load your ***** clothes. Separate your colors from your whites. Try not to linger too long on the shirt you first met him in.

2. Add detergent, only half a cup. Fill with cold water, watch as cerulean galaxies form right before your eyes. Realize just how much of you is not you.

3. Fill with warm water. Start spin cycle. Press your ear against the machine, hear its prehistoric roar rumble through your bones(now your shakes have excuses)have it envelope your senses until you assimilate into history and star stuff.

4. Jump when the buzzer goes off. Brush yourself off and hastily transfer loads into the dryer. Persevere when the wet clothes weigh down your arms more than thoughts of him, of his smile, of his laugh(****)

5. Set the dry cycle for another hour. Try not to think about your homework, remember that he's in your chemistry class, bite your head off. Sit on the dryer, close your eyes, pretend you're on a space ship shuttling through the atmosphere, through the Earth's orbit, on your way to the moon or Venus(****, you think of him again)or Pluto. Salsa on Saturn's rings, fall through Jupiter, turn stars into sticker on your skin, add pulsars, neutron stars, and quasars to your scrapbook(even if you don't scrapbook)

6. Return to Earth when the dryer shouts beneath you. Fold your shirts. Try not to think about the way his cheeks and face folds how he buckles over when he laughs, or how you did that first when that stupid statistic about how people like to mimic the habits of their love interest(***** science, if i can't explain my feelings, neither can it)comes to mind. Don't even look at that ******* shirt, toss it to the back of your dresser. Tuck sleeves left over right. Shove away thoughts of tucking stray tendrils of hair behind his ears, the feeling of his soft hair beneath your fingertips, how he cradled himself into your arms when he gets embarrassed.

7. Hang up your dad's formal shirts, your brother's tank tops, your mom's blouses. Blane your fatigue on the time of day rather than your depressive disorder. Blame your depressive disorder on your tendency to box yourself in and hold your own head underwater and struggle to breathe.

8. Accidentally close your eyes too long but just long enough for your mind to project  slideshow presentation of him standing off to the side, lingering for someone you wish was you (but it'll never be you, you know this like you know how two opposite symmetrical particles annihilate each other upon impact, a fatal encounter)

9. Throw back the tearstained shirts, socks, and boxers into the dryer. Set for twenty minutes. Almost forget to change the lint filter.

10. Stand there, numb and wet-faced, as the machine rocks, focus on the shaking of the tumbles to remember where you are, who you are.

11. Realize how often you lie to yourself(it doesn't take a genius to recognize a pattern)(remember Matt, Jamie, Julia; all fatal encounters, the stray neutrons in your equilibrium)Realize this is self-destruction. You are matter searching for antimatter, the particle searching for your antiparticle. You love the pattern(you're a routine-loving virgo, after all; you live for periodic patterns)love the cycles like the seasons. Like Persephone taking summer and spring with her every year, you are both Hades and Demeter. Cherishing new companionship, mourning the loss of your heart and soul.

12. He is the bull, you tell yourself, and bulls trample. Bulls stomp and wreck and dance and fly, but bulls are wild and untamable. Bulls don't belong with China-shop girls with scorched tongues and thumbs and an affinity for loving supernovas and jackhammers.