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I use a laundromat on Bow St. in Union Square religiously. A lot can go down in said establishments. One might – pardon the pun – air his or her dirty laundry. Local poet Linda Larson gives us her take on it…
![](http://www.thesomervilletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/larson_webx.jpg)
Poet Linda Larson
At the Laundromat
There were just the two of us with time to kill. It was natural that we would fall into conversation. He was young: I was not.
“I’m an Aries,” he said, “Maybe too much like my Dad. He was an Aries. He cheated on my mother in front of me. I was nine.
He never stayed at one job, never grew up.
But then I’m on the cusp of Taurus. Maybe I am bulling my way through life,
never knowing or caring who I hurt. Do you mind if I ask you?”
“I’m a Cancer,” I reply.
“No wonder I am telling you this. Cancers are so motherly, domestic, caretakers.
My moon is in Cancer.
I had to quit on my best friend, my roommate. I made him move out.
He never did his laundry or cleaned his room. He is a Pisces, so talented.
He is in his last incarnation; he has everything. I gave him a choice. It was either me or the bottle.”
I steal a glance at my New Yorker, then start to read it in earnest. Realizing I was guilty of being ill-mannered, I said to him,
“It’s not you, it’s me. I have this terrible habit. I am always reading, putting reading before chores, before human kind.”
“I want to be a doctor,” he said, finished folding his clothes,
and gently touched my shoulder in farewell.
— Linda Larson
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