Sharisse Zeroonian

Prompt: The Smell Of Your Grandmothers Laundry Room - From Episode 07

Sacred Geometry

“This room is big enough to get married in.” Calvin had said – when he was seventeen and I sixteen, as we sat in my grandmother’s laundry room, seeking refuge from her New Year’s Eve party going on upstairs. The guests were particularly excited, as the new millennium was arriving.

“I pretended to once.” I said. “Used my Grandma’s coat as a veil.”

He laughed, and rifled through my laundry basket. He pulled out my favorite blanket, a love-worn, multi-colored quilt.

“This looks special.” He said, admiring the sacred geometry in each of its squares. Indeed it was; my great-grandmother sewed it after hearing that my mother was pregnant with me. Two months later, she was dead. 

“That old thing? No.”  I giggled uncomfortably, and wrapped the quilt – big enough for two – around myself. A silent minute passed, and I could feel his gaze traveling down my body slowly and carefully, like a child learning to write.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Taking in…..” He stopped, and looked down shyly. “.....the last few minutes of the century.”

“And maybe the world.”

“Oh, stop.”

“I’d be fine with that. Just imagine; no more school, work, love, regrets –“

“People who jump off bridges and survive say they regretted it the minute they hit the water.”

“Well, personally I’d welcome it.”

“Could you welcome anything?”

“Don’t know.”

In spite of myself, I felt my fingers crawling out from under the blanket; when they met his, I yanked my hand back as if I’d touched a hot stove. We braced ourselves, alone with nothing but each other, the anxious rumbling of the washer, and the dryer emitting pheromones of lilac and cotton into the dark.