By Madison  [madi@yada-yada.com]
Date: 2 June 1998

Cold Water Rinse

We sat wordless in the laundromat,
as if on a pew
at a stranger's funeral,
waiting for the service to end.
Your clothes tumbled.

My eyes scanned inverted mylar letters
deliberately misspelled across a plate glass window.
Sunday traffic on the street, a smudge of color.
The world tumbled.
Mine was frozen in this dingy, concrete structure.
 
Eau de Cologne in a sapphire vial,
your gift, lingered on my skin
like a living legacy.
Forgetting not to touch,
it rode a damp current of air, elusive
in the gap between our stackable chairs,
where we purchased pardon
from a coin-operated Tide dispenser. 
You washed away my scent.
Oceans of suds.
Nullified.

The thrumming mantra of machines, 
a flat anesthesia, as I watched from inside.   
Out in the parking lot
You - hidden by the hatchback
your rented compact car,
while breathless embraces 
begged a rendezvous
I could see the still-warm
cotton whites and denim,
inhaled, approved and granted passage 
before their sterile junket
to a satchel waiting in the trunk.
Away from me.

Two cars drove from the scene,             
as coins fell to the bottom of a metal box
in a dank and humid room.
The last rites, 
where we buried the evidence
of love.

________________________________

M. Madison
Copyright 1998
madi@yada-yada.com