You have carried me to this room six times today, arms wrapped around a plastic hull, and I want you to know I noticed the good part. Not the folding. The lifting. The moment you crouched, and my thighs woke up, and my back arranged itself along a curve it hasn't used since the last time you moved furniture. That was the best thing we did all day. I would like to do more of it, honestly.
The rest I logged too. You held your breath through the whole descent of the stairs, one basket-width of vision, feeling for each step with the front of your foot like something blind and brave. Your shoulders climbed toward your ears somewhere around the third sock and stayed there. That knot behind your left blade?
That is where you put the thing you were replaying, the conversation, whatever it was. I don't know its name. I only know it weighs about as much as a wet towel and you've been carrying it since noon.
Your hands smell warm now, of that dryer heat you love, and your fingers moved through the folding on their own while your face went somewhere else entirely. I did the whole basket without you. I usually do.
Here is my request, and it is small. When you set me down empty and feel that odd lightness in your arms, the phantom weight still there, don't rush to fill them again. Just stand a second. Let the shoulders come down. And a glass of water, if it isn't any trouble.
You forgot, around basket four, that we drink.