Laundering Life

Disparagement finds him at the corner of helplessness and competition. He sees the structure of lassitude ripping away at the rest of his foundations. The spokes on the wheel come to a pause. He understands nothing about himself. They come with the contrast of applause and disapproval interdicting the cross-sections of his worth. He locks his bike and shoves the seat into his backpack.

He’s unable to understand the Lilliputian credence of his origins. His backpack is so heavy and angular. His shoulders hurt from the walk. He enters the ghetto and his steps become lighter and quicker. His thoughts rotate in and out of invidious internal dialogue gauging at how they can take advantage of his magnanimity. Richard, Bruce, and Allen are all rebels without a cause; he snaps
into the memory of the last incursion; he was told to walk elsewhere after emptying his sum of the night. His pockets strain in impecunious drought; he never has enough because he can’t control what is unfair. To add to his lonely well, he gives most of his earnings to his mother inured by the sufferings of her child as she carries the inability to help beyond the words of strength washed in the mud of indigence.

His shift was 12 hours long. He stood on his feet for the majority of that time- he washes and cleans what is not his; he restores the implacable wrinkles in expensive fabric until they hold their own firmness.

He exits on Hoyt street attending to the direction home for a quick wash and rest. He needs to be back with the machines at 5 am. He plans to feed his ill mother the remaining of the porridge that he cooked for her that earlier morning.

He empties his pockets and folds his pants inside out. The dirty hamper gets released into the wash, his mother’s included. Life does not smile at him for doing a good job. It’s what he has to do. It’s what she needs. He feeds the spirit of the house with a jolt of passion, a kind that can not be replicated in the house of the rich. He has what he has and his soul could not speak more admiringly in his situation. He closes his eyes and next comes a sleep that is not man-made but powered by the existence of the universe.