Separate Laundry

The laundromat was nearly empty at 11 PM, just the thrum of washing machines and that perpetual scent of fabric softener that always reminded Elena of hospitals. She sat on a folding chair, watching her clothes spin through the glass, water sloshing against the metal drum like waves against a shore she'd stopped visiting years ago.

She'd found his baseball cap in her closet that morning — navy blue, sweat-stained, the one he'd worn to every game until the season she'd stopped caring about sports entirely. It had been three years since David left, but somehow his belongings continued to surface like debris after a shipwreck, each one a small anchor dragging her back into waters she'd sworn she'd navigated past.

"They say you're supposed to do separate loads for colors and whites," said a voice behind her.

Elena turned to find an older woman watching her own laundry tumble, gray hair pulled back in a loose bun, eyes tired but kind.

"I guess," Elena said. "I never really learned the rules properly."

"Nobody does," the woman said. "We just wash things and hope they don't ruin each other. Kind of like relationships, when you think about it."

Elena laughed despite herself. "Is that what we're doing? Washing ourselves separately so we don't bleed onto each other?"

"Some things need to bleed," the woman said quietly. "That's how you know they're still alive."

Elena thought about the spinach she'd burned that night, the night David finally packed his bags. She'd been trying to cook something healthy, something that said *I want us to live*, but she'd gotten distracted by his phone buzzing on the counter, messages from someone she didn't know. The spinach had blackened in the pan while she stood there, water boiling over onto the stove, neither of them speaking.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the baseball cap, running her thumb over the frayed edge.

"My ex-husband's," she said, surprised by her own candor. "Found it today."

"Keeping it?"

"I don't know." Elena turned it over in her hands. "Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to set it on fire."

"The washing machine doesn't care about either," the woman said, nodding toward the machine that had just stopped. "It just washes. Things come out clean or they don't. The machine's got no stake in it either way."

Elena stood up and opened the washer door. Steam billowed out, warm against her face. She dropped the baseball cap onto the wet pile of clothes, closed the door, and started the cycle again.

"Same as before," she said. "Just one more time."

"Sometimes that's all you can do," the woman said. "Wash it again. See what comes out."

Elena watched the cap spin through the glass, dipping beneath the water, surfacing again, over and over. It wasn't forgiveness, exactly. But it was something.

"I think," Elena said, "I think I'm ready to fold them separately this time."