‘Laundromat’
— Reneé Bibby
This week, I went looking for a light-hearted story as respite from the injustice of forced separation of families at the US border, but was instead immediately sucked into the dark magical vortex of Sara Mikula’s flash fiction, ‘Laundromat.’ Mikula’s fiction is a darkness of a different kind; it’s not lifting our stoic facades to reveal the maggoty heart of humanity. The sadness in Mikula’s piece is more existential than circumstantial; it’s about the long, slow burn of a life that fizzles away, unnoticed. It’s about the impermanence of self and the simple joys we manage to eke out in fusillade of time passing.
Stirred into a rage by current affairs I felt myself soothed by Laundromat. While not exactly uplifting, this long-range view on life proved to be exactly what was called for—not to settle into a perspective as reductive as “this too shall pass” but a reminder that maybe that not all of life is a dumpster fire. And while it may not be a glorious and astounding hallelujah, either, it is life. And it goes, sometimes simple, pure, sad, and gentle.