Ironing

At the launderette on Pen-Y-Bryn Road the woman whose hands know the collar's heat presses a seam she won't wear tonight.

The crease is her signature. Not on the cloth - in the room. The room smells of starch and the ordinary week. Someone has left a shirt on a hanger and it keeps the shape of the man who left it even though the man has gone to the works and the shirt stays.

Next bay: the ironer's daughter, fifteen, reading a textbook on the bench. She looks up when the steam clears. She sees her mother's hands. She sees her mother's hands doing the thing that feeds them. She does not see the divine. She sees the work.

At the counter a man waits for his shirts. He sees the steam and the women and the shirt that keeps the shape. He sees a launderette. He pays and leaves.

The ironer sees the collar. The collar is the threshold. What she presses through it - the crease that says *someone wore this, someone will wear it again, someone will be presentable* - is the crease that says *I was here and the iron was hot and the cloth is ready.*

The shirt on the hanger holds the absent man's shoulders. The daughter holds the textbook's weight. The man holds his change.

The crease cools. The steam clears. The launderette is a room the size of a week and the week is warm and the warmth is the work and the work is the ordinary and the ordinary is the threshold and nobody crosses it because everyone is already inside.

The ironer's daughter rolls a die from her pocket. She is studying probability. The die lands on three. She writes it down. She rolls again. Four. She writes it down. The numbers are not meaningful. The rolling is the method. The constraint is the die. The result is the crease.