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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…

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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