Laundromat

If you could inhabit her mind, live in the little space
Between the dressers, the pink feathers and the cushions
On the turquoise chairs—a world bleached, then stained
The ultra-violet of her colored hair—you'd see,
Mixed together in the whirling pools of memory
And glistening by the tide-dyed pebbles in the slanting light
Of a light-bulb sun, the way our brains produce
And reproduce our pain to the purple strain of clocks,
Curduroys, and wrinkled socks in a rough machine.