This is how I’d spend my last day ever.

A writer, a laundromat, and the end of the world walk into a spin cycle.

No matter how much you travel the world or how far from home you find yourself, one truth remains constant: somewhere, someone is doing laundry.

I’ve had the strange privilege of doing laundry on five continents. Sometimes it felt like a chore wedged between lunch breaks and meetings. But more often, it felt peaceful. Almost romantic. I loved the people-watching. I loved the rhythm of it. How fellow laundromat-goers would always have something to look forward to right after. Habit is, sometimes, the mother of hope.

It made me wonder: on the last day of Earth, where would this hope go? How much would we care about stains? Would we still bother to fold? Visit laundromats, our little sacred spaces of maintenance? Part of me thinks we might, as a refusal to let chaos have the final word.

Somewhere I heard a song lyric from a friend (or maybe a quote?) that went “I am relieved that I left my room tidy. They’ll think of me kindly when they come for my things.” This poem was born from that sentiment. And from the thrilling mundanity of my many laundromat adventures--from many fluorescent-lit temples of suds.

Retirement in Spin Cycle

Shuffling home this dawn,
blue uniform hung limp on a trident’s hook,
the tide pockets the last three seashells
of its pension.
And the day begins.

First, two decades of bleach
refuse to erase her sheets,
or rather his lingering scent and its yellowy outline,
police chalk on concrete.
His legs once tangled in this cotton, 
they remember,
and they hold his shape 
as the least they can do.
Military precision tucks 
more than one ghost in tight,
as the widow folds and smooths,
kissing the corners, 
before moving on 
to the pillowcases.

Outside the laundromat, the fish are found first,
silver bodies curled, unsettled queries
on the shore.
Men and women drag
the silence in their buckets,
thick as wet wool,
to the only other place 
with water still in abundance.

A wayward machine shudders, spitting up
baby socks that bloom like confetti,
tiny celebrants of milk-sick joy.
Splotches, for a new mother, 
are nothing less than holy,
and she minds the cyclical kaleidoscope
that aches to keep spinning, smelling
of apple juice and the sleepless nights 
she will miss 
in eighteen years.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have eaten the blue crayon.
Her favorite blouse goes unwashed.

A man ironing sweat stains feels deep desire:
Some twenty years younger, 
a girl with split lips empties
pockets of receipts into a free washer.
Is it bad to wish he looked that battered? He wonders
and scorches his finger, cursing
his insensitivity
He calculates: people will see 
visible wreckage and, at least,
take pity. 
When the bruising is internal
one must alone face the detritus, 
or otherwise
risk another shipwreck.
The dryer’s rumble yawns, 
covering the sound of teeth grinding.
Hours of steaming and pressing 
bear fruits of starchy button-ups,
the shape of a man
thinning at the cuffs,
anodyne and violently prime 
for his next months of 9 to 5.

All the stains run together,
in pipes beneath the city,
the last underground river 
of salty fabric softener.

Practicing his eulogy 
to the beat of the dryer,
the old man is ready to celebrate his life.
His lucky hat rests on the folding table,
frayed edges trembling in the exhaust fan’s breath.
He does not want to miss out
on the nice things 
people will say about him,
surely not his grandkids in their teeny tennis shoes,
so mark his words, 
he tells the dryer, 
I will be alive, 
and wear my nicest linens 
to my funeral.

Churning with salt, the washers
spin wheezing cycles, 
aching to please resigned clients.
Mothers wring out 
school uniforms
and beg the suds,
Come back, come back.

The girl with split lips has done her laundry 
on five continents 
and looks like me.
She watches the water turn pink,
then clear, then pink again,
a magic trick without audience,
only a rhythmic thunk applauds.

The writer pretends to read Neruda,
but steals their stories 
like lint off sleeves.
This is me, and I am all of these:
The old man, the girl, all the mothers, 
the blue businessman, the sweet widow.
All the mothers.
I have imagined this last day of Earth, 
such a fantasy.
It begins with a receding of the tide,
and ends only with an exhale,
belly full of thousands of years,
and we are all sound asleep in soft pajamas.

This crumbling sea of sharks I do not fear,
not even on my last day.
Yes, I will be here
at the laundromat.
At the laundromat 
on the last day of the world
because I am a creature of habit.
Because everything is fleeting, 
and therefore worth writing down.
Because this final breath 
is but one moment 
among many.
Because I have many clothes,
so my closet is crowded with selves,
and they all need pressing.

I will wear them like a backpacker 
evading TSA checked weight limits,
so when the ocean sips the world and has its way,
I will be swallowed authentically.

The mothers draft something pulpy,
while their children leave home thinking
they knows what home is.
Beneath the ground,
the young woman’s starch
thickens the businessman’s wine-dark water.
Perhaps the widower and the old man will meet.

At dusk, the moon, 
in its final sleepy gulps,
tugs its milk-grey gloves tight,
and before retiring, scrubs vestigial stains
from emptied boats.
But some things,
like the smell of low tide
or a child’s whale drawing,
protest coming clean.
Even steamy water, on occasion, 
recalls snippets
that too much detergent 
wills itself to forget.
And the ocean, blue as his uniform,
folds it all away.

Even the poem is written 
on the back of a dryer sheet,
and will be fed to the lint trap,
another thing never really blank.