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I stopped for the laundry and then I moved to capture the laundry and its shadow on the ground from another angle and saw the details when I came around for a closer look.

I love laundry hanging on the line. I’ll stop and photograph it anywhere I can stop safely, like, not while driving down the interstate. But from my own back yard to my neighbors’ to anywhere around it’s the randomness of the shapes of clothes and household goods, their movements in breezes, or their stillness, the practicality and unconcern for privacy in the humbleness of the household’s goods clipped to a piece of rope out there for all to see, and to dry naturally and be unclipped and taken down to be folded or hung up or just put in a pile for immediate reuse. In this day and age it’s rarely out of need or lack of a dryer, it’s usually by choice.

Then studying the things hanging I saw clothes of all different ages and sizes that indicate people of all different ages and sizes, children and their parents or guardians. Looking down from the clothes to see the shadows they cast I saw newly turned soil, and beyond that, by the side of the steps and the privacy fence a green plastic watering can and some seedlings in market packs waiting to be planted, a lawn mower and an orange pumpkin bucket neatly lined up ready to serve. You could look out that door on the porch from probably the kitchen and check your laundry on the line, see the progress of your garden and plan a meal.

You would pull up in the alley and see your back yard garden, your laundry, the door to your kitchen. It’s home, where your things are, where you’ve literally put down roots.

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