Page 85 of Wayfarers

on the sand. I’m sleepy too, feel the sun

in my bones, and Knox and I drift unspoken

toward land. I coax Winslow

to the outdoor shower and shampoo

the lake smell out of both of us

while Knox goes to get some dry clothes.

When he comes back, he’s in what he wore

yesterday. Laundry day, he says,

smiling in that lazy way that tells me

he’s also feeling the same languid

driftless joy that’s washing over me.

Joy, a place I haven’t been in so long,

a place we’re somehow in together. Somehow

I’m weightless—my towel-dried hair,

the tops of my shoulders red and hot

to the touch. Driving slow toward

the laundromat, that “Fast Car” song

on the radio, Knox resting his cast

on the open window. A snarled-up knot

has gone loose in my chest, and if

I pull it, I wonder if it’ll come all the way apart.

Sylvie

“I thought we’d need quarters.”

Knox is already unloading his bag into a washing machine. “Only in movies,” he says. “Anymore you just load cash onto a card. Have you not been in laundromats much?”

“I’ve only been on the road a little while and I was procrastinating doing laundry.”

He smiles a little. “You seem disappointed by the modernity of laundromats.”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Change can be hard to deal with.”

“Oh, I have plenty of change,” I tell him, and pull out my coin purse to jingle it at him.

“Wow,” he says. “That was the dad joke to end all dad jokes.”