Over-thinking Things

"Sorting Laundry" by Elisavietta Ritche

This poem displays how people can over-analyze a situation to the point of distorting something as pure as love into anxiety and insecurity.  The speaker of the poem speaks to her absent lover, comparing doing their laundry to "folding you into my life" (Ritche 841).  Her relationship with this man appears perfect and without worry.  The two laugh at their tacky towels, do not mind each other's old clothes, and embrace each other's "wrinkles" or flaws (Ritche 841). However, after the seventh stanza, the speaker's insecurity starts to set in.  She starts focusing on minute details in the laundry like unpaired socks and miscellaneous items she finds in pockets.  This attention to minutia represents her thinking too much about her wonderful relationship and fabricating hypothetical scenarios in her head.  Her anxiety peaks when she folds the shirt of one of her former lovers. The act elicits thoughts of abandonment and the speaker states, "If you were to leave me . . . a mountain of unsorted wash could not fill the empty side of the bed," (Ritche 842).  She has worried to the point of transforming a wonderful relationship into one on the verge of collapse.  The poem should have a wide audience as there are many people that have over-analyzed something good into a distortion of its true nature due to their insecurities.