Microcosm: Laundry

There are seagulls flying around in Queens.  They hover over the sidewalk between my apartment and the laundromat.  Some lady has taken up five of the large washers, and she is taking her time filling them up and speaking in some other language to her granddaughter.  Sorry, she says, when I ask her if she is using this last empty one.  No one in the laundromat is speaking English: mostly Spanish and and something else that is mysterious to me.  I stuff my pants into a small washer, and I am thinking about what I'm writing, something about GRACE and grace and Texas and the death penalty.  I fill a dryer with wet t-shirts and underwear and socks and I am thinking about a girl.  There are people folding laundry talking in Spanish on their cell phones, and children running around between the carts full of laundry.

I fold my pants and dress shirts and stuff everything into my mesh laundry bag.  Outside piles of gray and white snow have been pushed to the edge of the sidewalk and puddles of slush have gathered at the ends of the driveways and pedestrian ramps and along the curb.  It's cloudy but the sky opens a little above my head.  Someone is moving out of my apartment building.  I hope they leave a bookshelf on the sidwalk that I can carry back up the stairs.