Alley-way wisdom

The Lysol got into my skin…soaked right through all three layers of it because I couldn’t find my fucking rubber gloves that I bought for this specific purpose. I can practically taste the chemicals. I shudder to think that Lysol was used for feminine hygiene way back in the day. 

I scrubbed my fingertips to the bone; I even got that weird gunky stuff around the rim of the drain. I wiped down the shower curtain, changed the towels. I can do the laundry tonight; it’s not like I will have much else to do, except possibly masturbate. But in all honesty, I am going to be too tired for that. So I might as well just sit around with a book and wait for the whites to stop tumbling. 

When I was kid I used to like to sit in front of our front-loading washers and watch all the fabrics slosh and swirl. I would just sit there and stare at it. It wasn’t particularly awe-inspiring. I wasn’t thinking about the natural rhythms of life: the unending circle of seasons, birth, death, or how even after someone close to you leaves the sun still rises and sets like always. I didn’t think of anything. I just sat there with my juice box among the dirty clothes and watched the water and colors spiral into each other. If I had thought about it, I would have thought it looked something like eternity. Until the buzzer went off anyway. 

Now I’m sitting here, waiting for tomorrow, waiting for the sun to rise and set like it always does. Waiting for your car to find its way to me. I’m just staring off into space as the pixels on my screen blur into each other, and I am cursed by constant thought. No, no younger me—this, this right now, is eternity.