LAUNDROMAT

I’m an all-night laundromat

spinning, shaking, spinning

bleach water loads

cycle to completion

according to the cleansing ritual protocols

learned from the counsel of elders

while the wizened and white-haired housewives

pollute their senses with fabric softener

until their eyes glisten and eventually they fold

under the fluorescent light that washes my floor and walls

while quite a few wigs worth of lint lay unswept

behind my industrial steel turbines that serve as wombs

for the rebirth of your second skin,

the paint you throw on your body’s canvas

to cover and reveal at the same time,

but all is revealed under my harsh glare

and all is hidden as I suck away the vestiges

of your biological nature from the bandages

that cover the wound that your nudity has become

since shame soiled the previously untrammeled surface of your soul

searching for a fear to couple with and call its very own

like the late-night denizens who feed their lost hours into my slots

in search of an absolution that only a public institution

like me can provide at three in the morning

with your slippers on.