Unwashed

The dryers are a chorus of heavy zips

and buttons hitting the metal drums.

The sun is trying to get into the laundromat

but it gets caught in the grease and the crumbs.

The glass is coated in a layer of city—

diesel soot and the ghost of a palm.

The light doesn't cut, it just spills

like a bucket of milk, thick and calm.

It makes the linoleum look almost clean.

It hides the cracks in the yellowed floor.

I’m in no rush to leave this hazy room

and walk back through the street-side door.