A Quality of Light

Courtesy Eddie Quinones @ Flickr CC

Something about waiting in a laundromat feels like this moment.

From the constant hum and thunk of the rotating machines, to the smell of damp and steam and the propped open doors, to the random tabloid pages and the women's mags worn thin and soft as cotton flannel, waiting in this laundromat is like being inside a warm egg with new, wet feathers, waiting and warming.

A quality of light found only in laundromats is the color of waiting, the buzzing blue florescent shimmer neither too bright nor quite bright enough, the sense of swimming through some thick sparking nowhere. Whitens! Brightens!

It doesn't. Not ever.

Invisible and too visible, the color of waiting is a quality of light that flecks grey eyes with silver and shadows with swirls of white, like the white of a poached egg or a sheet that is not quite dry or maybe starched with albumin.

Launderers avoid the whites of each other's eyes but notice everyone everything else, the torn wet Tide package committed to memory, the Tide comes in but never stays in. The peanuts are always stale.

Bring your own.

Why are we waiting?

Why is this steel egg shabby sad tired end

less.