I finished a first draft of the laundry poem, mostly while sitting in the back garden, and I finished it despite the 12 hours of street construction rocking the neighborhood. Constant racket and dust, plus being stared at by the flagger every time I step out my door--it's all a headache and a distraction, so the fact that I wrote a poem in the midst of this--a historical poem that has nothing to do with dump trucks or pavement--feels like some sort of accomplishment.

Today, I'm washing sheets, and getting my hair cut, and going to the fish market, and working on Frost Place stuff, and attending a Zoom meeting, and maybe tinkering a little more with that poem draft. It's difficult to garden out front with that staring flagger on patrol, but at some point I'll have to check up on my plants. I'll have to assume a familiar woman's role: donning a mask of icy indifference as a way to manage a sketchy, overfamiliar stranger. I hate that this is a regular part of our communal lives.