Written by Sara Mikula
You were born into the Laundromat service. As a young child you enjoyed the smell of dryer sheets and detergent, the sound of clothes tumbling and drying in the machines, and the feel of fresh clean clothes on your body.
There were parts of the city, other than yours, that smelled like fresh laundry. You walked slower through those parts and even lingered sometimes until your senses adjusted and you couldn’t smell the fresh laundry anymore.
You inherited the business and worked every day of the week. Every Friday you treated yourself to the movies, purchasing a popcorn and soda too, which you finished during the previews.
Many people came to your Laundromat to do their laundry, but you never met any of them. They read their books and magazines and bought soda from the vending machine. Sometimes they left their books and magazines and you would collect them and read them when you went home after closing.
You grew old and you enjoyed the process.
When you died the Laundromat closed and your customers had to find another Laundromat. They wondered what happened but never found out. They continued to have clean clothes and they enjoyed sodas from other vending machines. They left their books and magazines in the new Laundromat and these were thrown away at the end of each day.
featured in our spring 2018 issue
Lovely piece – I enjoyed the imagery and the sense of how life is lived – just lived…..thanks
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I thought this was lovely and really quite sad too. There’s just this sort of unnoticed life that happens in its own modest little way and that’s it. I think each reader will either bring happiness or sadness to that, depending on themselves.
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Evocative in its simplicity. The laundromat smells were depicted well.
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