Spin Cycle Slow

Clothes circle in the washer’s blue eye,

motion trapped in a dim spinning drum.

Flickering lights hum a tired tune,

time stretched thin inside this glass jar.

I watch jeans twist like locked limbs,

colors bleeding through the rinse and repeat.

Waiting becomes a thin skin, tight and itchy,

a pause stretched too long and too slow.

This room—half prison, half refuge—holds

whispers of other people’s laundry and loss,

watches the night flicker with each cycle,

till the drum stops, and so do we.