i think about those days when we used to trash talk in the laundry rooms on the second floor. we sat on the rusted benches giving serious, solemn looks to the people we didn’t recognize who dragged their clothes here, and then we gave each other serious, solemn looks. we talked about people we didn’t care about and people who didn’t care about us and the people who left us behind.
i dragged my fingertips along the rust until they burned and i imagined they were angry and red and this is what a third degree burn feels like, in my ashy insides, in my ashy heart. i looked anywhere but at you.
i left my wrists upturned to the fluorescent lights and you lined up the quarters people dropped along the plastic tabletops. the steam from the dryers steamed up the windows steamed up our lazy wandering voices and we never even thought about opening the windows, we never ever did. we both caught glimpses of something nebulous and uncertain like water vapor like us and i thought how closed windows and the smell of laundry would always remind me of you, how we were just a blurry snapshot of something you could almost make out, fuzzy figures who could be anyone and that’s good, i suppose, because i want to be anyone.
as i walked home alone, i thought that i’d never been this cold in my entire life.
