Guilt

Guilt is the sour taste of fluorescent lights

in a laundromat in a part of town

you swore you’d never even visit

but now you live in a flat just above that tiny, wretched place

with the daughter you never wanted

waking each morning to the thick smell of wet clothes

brought in at midnight but somehow forgotten

and you can’t find any stillness for the baby

always shrieking

because even if her colic is somehow soothed

she can still feel the morose thump-thump

of that coin-operated machine

that will one day be her lonesome refuge

from you.