Last Call at the Laundromat (March 20, 2011. Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!)
Last call at the laundromat looks a lot like single's night at your local dive bar.
Lost souls flock from out of the shadows to play games with quarters and take shots of detergent,
The women look like former pageant contestants from the 70s who time hasn't been all that kind to,
The men, sway with bum hips and bad knees, drinking paper-sacked Budweisers to ease their pain like it's the elixir of everlasting life.
They all show up with their baskets, looking for love,
or something like it.
These people are dirty.
But they find solace in their similarities, make eyes at each other from across the room, whistle and giggle like teenagers,
and most of them will end up going home with whoever pays for their spin cycle.
--
As sexual tensions fade and wild nights walk out the door, I sit watching as the last of the night crawlers slither away.
The dryers purr, and the only ones left tumbling are mine
and hers.
With her passing glance and cursory smile
she tells me her life story.
I imagine her name is something simple and pure... Annie
Annie is built like a second helping of Thanksgiving dinner.
The stuffing in her thighs gives way to her
misshapen mashed potato midsection.
She whistles with lips sweet as cranberries,
her face is round and bright like a pumpkin pie.
She is a poetic muse disguised as a girl
whose forgotten how to love herself,
Not surprising considering how many times she's felt like just another fat girl, a class clown, the girl everybody likes but nobody fucks,
at least not with their eyes open.
--
Annie makes music.
One day, she passed a flea market window with
a six-string guitar being sold for next to nothing.
She bought it because she knew what it felt like
to be worth that much.
So now, she plays sad songs and waltzes to
half-empty souls at half full coffee houses,
she sings like a phantom poet begging
someone to see through her,
Cuz her smiles have all been shaken off like bad habits,
her knights in shining armor ride right past her,
so she says 'fuck 'em',
But still, she can't help but splash makeup on her face
even to come to a place like this,
for the same reason that her wheelchair-ridden sister sometimes wears high-heeled shoes,
she just wants to feel beautiful.
But she has never found someone who can
scrub the dirt off her skin quite like she dreams
so she shows the world her soul under the
fluorescent lights of the laundromat.
I wanna tell her,
That the only beautiful people I've ever known,
have been broken.
Like change machines kicked for quarters
one too many times, we live our lives
out of order.
We are dirty.
But last call at the laundromat paints portraits of lovers
who have lived their lives in the depths of the dirt,
who've rolled in the mud, rolled in the hay,
and came out the other side...clean. |