text: thoughts??? ideas on where to take it?? &#x200B; Naturally, I use a washing machine to wash my clothes. Unnaturally, I think about how it makes it so easy to forget dirt stains and the memories that came with them. Even the stubborn ones go away after a while. The laundromat doesn’t let you wash rubber-lined mats, but I wash them anyway. I conceal them in a ball of cotton sheets and shove them into the corner washer as quickly as possible. The same way, I shove them into the dryer. They only need 4 quarters; a good 20 minutes and they dry right up. It's amazing. The fresh scent Tide on my washroom rubber mats, all the filth and blood wrung out of them. I want to think the dryer is gentle to them, pulling out the moisture softly and kindly. But in reality, the inside of the dryer is aggressive and unforgiving. Dangerously humid and bleak. Yes, I know this for a fact. There’s no one else here except for the plump middle-aged lady who’s always at the front folding other peoples’ laundry. Everyone calls her Bea. Does Miss Bea get pleasure out of folding soft strangers’ clothes; does she ever find money in their pockets? And what type of people don’t have time to wash their own laundry? I’m thinking this as she steams the pleats of a woman’s dress that she couldn’t even dream of ever fitting into. I wonder about the woman who wears that dress - probably tall, slender and deliciously round in all the right places. Maybe she wears it a big established corporate office. A big businesswoman like herself wouldn’t wear anything less pretty. In fact, she shouldn’t - unless I was with her.We, meaning myself and my laundry walk ourselves back to my car. The air outside is a type of cold you just want to breathe in like the smoke from a Belmont cigarette. It’s the type of air that hurts to breathe after a while. The sun was pale and sad, like the moon had decided to come out instead. Maybe the sun took a sick day. The snow however looked rather sparkly and confident but only where no one had walked all over it and ruined it. Everyone loves new snow but its only fun shovelling until it turns into a disgusting sludge of dirt, branches and lost mittens and hats - then I’m lucky if I find a matching pair to wear the next time it snows. I plop the drawstring bag under the cheap black carpet lining of the trunk where the spare tire should have been. Walking back to the front of my 2014 Toyota Corolla, I look back at the laundromat:NEW WORLD LAUNDRYIt’s a weekly trip to the washed-out pale blue and white sign on Parliament Street. But for some reason I don’t think I’ll be back next week.I inhale a couple Oreos that I have in a little packet kept in the glove compartment. Then the metaphysical world hits me and I feel the rough texture of the third Oreo. I wonder why they bother putting such a complicated design on the cookie when no one pays attention to them. What’s the point of making things more complicated than they have to be? Does it affect the Oreo experience? I laugh out loud in my sparse voice. Here I am, in my cab with a box of designer cookies. When did I start affording such luxuries? Of course, I knew it from the Cross of Lorraine. Geometric crusader cookies. I even remember googling it. I laughed again, louder this time as though someone was going to start laughing with me. The cream is sickly sweet but soft enough to make me want more. So, I have a few more before rolling down my window and wiping the cookie crumbs off my long veiny fingers. My hands instantly freeze in the cold air and I wish they’d just fall off. I am elemental so this will be no resolution. I will exist even after I have existed. Water exists even after it goes down the drain. They just wash it and send it back to you. The same old water. How do they call it? Water purification. I reckon I’ll be drinking laundry water the next time I go back home for a cup of tap water.The streets are far too bare to make money. All I know is I’m wasting gas driving around the city waiting for someone to hail me to the side or for an operator to buzz me in and assign me a pickup. Maybe I should go home and drop off my laundry, I think. But instead I stop for a cup of coffee. I park on the flat street in between an ugly 2007 Saturn Ion and a clunky Subaru Tribeca.This coffee shop is sweet. It’s one of those cute little cubes squished slightly behind a failing law office and another lesser quality restaurant. The baristas wear white shirts and beige aprons. Mmm. I spot the woman who makes my bitter coffee taste sweet. She could even make coffee burnt beyond recognition taste like molasses. I’m still working on my hypothesis, but I think it’s her long curly brown-blonde hair and deep almond eyes that make the coffee sweet, and not the sugar. I couldn’t care less for the coffee. I couldn’t care more about her.She hands me the cup and the immediate warmth of her love makes me shiver. “Thank you.” I say to her, smiling with my teeth and making pertinent eye contact. “You’re welcome.” is all she says back to me. If only she knew how badly I wanted to make love to her peaceful looking body. Could I have had found peace in her as badly as I wanted to offer her peace? I wanted to tell her how much I wanted to hold her around the small of her back. How much I wanted her bare chest pressed against mine. And I think most of all, I just wanted her to kiss me. Although graceful in her movements, she disappears into the back of the store quickly. Suddenly I remember I mean nothing to her, and my coffee feels strangely cold. Grief-stricken, overpriced coffee in hand, I walk back out onto the sidewalk. Just as I’m about to get back into my car, I open the lid, let the steam hit my face for a couple of seconds before pouring the brown water onto the street, watching it making its way towards a rain gutter.