The Launderette

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A girl was sitting in the windowsill of the launderette, her back half-turned to the street. Her white blouse clung tight against her body, her hair fell in thin strands across her shoulders. She sat bent intently over a writing pad on her knee, scribbling line after line of tiny words.
Behind her lay a bouquet of flowers, carefully wrapped in cellophane. Its colours had faded to mauve, and sepia, and burgundy. Its leaves and petals had shrunk to fragile brittleness.
While the girl wrote on feverishly, the washing machines were churning the laundry in a diurnal course.
Churning, and churning, and churning.