the folding chairs lean against each other, unsteady. someone tried to help, which is always worse. my arms are heavy.

i pick up a paper cup with a sticky ring of cheap white wine. i read my poem about my kid liking a specific brand of yogurt and now i am wiping up a stranger's pinot grigio spill. the beverage cooler motor kicks on and then off.

my own voice rattles in my skull. i can feel the exact cadence of the line that got a laugh i didn't expect. the streetlights make long shapes on the floorboards. i straighten memoirs next to the register. tomorrow i will sell them. tonight i turn off the lamps one by one.

the departure board is a masterpiece of optimistic fiction.
my tea has gone cold.
a young man meticulously folds and refolds a travel brochure for a place he'll probably never visit.
the creases are getting desperate.
his thumbnail, bitten to the quick, presses another perfect line.

then the focus blurs.
all these people, suspended.
each a carefully packed suitcase of private anxieties and lukewarm hopes.
the fluorescent tubes above flicker, indifferent to the quiet dramas unfolding beneath.
someone coughs, a dry, reedy sound.
it echoes briefly, then is absorbed by the weight of all this waiting.
there's a certain fragile architecture to it all.
a temporary city built on the promise of movement.

the last peach sat there, a warm weight on the formica.
everyone else was gone, juiced or sliced or simply disappeared into memory.
this one held its blush, a little too firm still, a little defiant.
it knew the score.

it felt the slight chill from the window, the tremor when the fridge started.
waiting.
a quiet anticipation, a final, perfect roundness.

the spin cycle shuddered, a bad dub of a forgotten track.
another tuesday, or perhaps a tuesday re-recorded over a thursday.
i recognized the chipped formica of the folding table, the exact shade of institutional beige.
a previous take, surely.
the only other soul in this laundromat concerto was a person, gender indeterminate under the stark fixtures, attending to a single white sock.
one sock.
it lay on their lap like a tiny, surrendered flag.
they folded it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts.
i'd seen this exact sock, this exact fold, in a dream fragment last week.
the details blurred, like worn vhs.
my life felt like a bootleg, sourced from a master tape someone found in a skip.
the bank of dryers beneath the flickering panel offered a chorus of worn bearings and tumbling denim, each cycle a degrading loop.
the sock person looked up, a brief, incurious glance.
their eyes held the flat patience of someone waiting for a dial-up connection to resolve.
just the machines, the meticulously folded sock, a tiny monument to something i couldn't name.
maybe the universe just had a limited sample budget.