With an over-sized comforter and urine-soaked dog bed I enter the small laundromat. Most of the machines are in use. Through the clear round glass windows of the doors I see a jumble of colors and whites tumbling together. A young Hispanic woman with two small children ignores the overhead sign—“No Sobrecargues las Máquinas!”—and crams the machine full with her entire basket of laundry. The kids sit quietly in the grimy plastic chairs against the wall, sharing a bag of chips and staring at the small television hung high in the corner. The woman on the screen—dressed like a duck—has just chosen door number two and won a trip to Quebec. She flaps her wings ecstatically and the children giggle.

A stooped elderly black woman sits at the table across the room meticulously folding faded bath towels into perfect rectangles. There’s a zen quality to her movements I find mesmerizing. She catches me looking and we exchange smiles. A tall, rail-thin goth kid, with a triple-pierced lower lip and kohl-lined eyes, rolls a metal cart over to a dryer and pulls out a pile of black jeans, black shirts, black socks, and black underwear, including a couple of black bras. He stuffs it all in a black garbage bag and turns to leave. Noticing one of the bras on the floor, I grab it and run after him. “Excuse me, you dropped this.” He turns and reaches for the bra, eyes cast down. “Thank you,” he says before slinging the bag over his shoulder. He walks out the door and saunters down the sidewalk.

Three cycles and eighteen dollars later, my items are dry enough to take home. Comforter and detergent under one arm and dog bed under the other, I head out. As I pass the black woman she stops her folding to look up. “Have a blessed day,” she says.

righteousness—
a bag of filthy rags
beneath the sink

Terri L. French

is an author, editor, and haiku poet who lives on the road, with her husband and dog, in a home on wheels. Terri is past Southeast Regional Coordinator for The Haiku Society of America and served on the Board of The Haiku Foundation. She is former editor of Prune Juice Journal (senryu & related forms), and on the editorial team of contemporary haibun online (cho).

Author’s website: https://www.terrilfrenchhaiku.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Precipice, haibun by Terri L. French in cho (Issue 18.3, December 2022)

⚡ Tongue-tied, haibun in cho (Issue 17.3, December 2021)

⚡ Tzur Hei HaOlamim, haibun story in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 5, October 2020)