Vogue Cleaners, 10 PM

Vogue Cleaners, 10 PM

The neon flickers,

hums like it’s thinking about dying.

Inside, rows of forgotten lives
hang stiff and silent,

waiting for owners
who aren’t coming back.

A wedding dress, its veil untouched,

waits as if time might change its mind.

Beside it, a funeral suit,
still stiff 
with a grief long spent.
A stuffed rabbit, its fur worn thin, 
listens for the voice of its missing kid-

A priest’s robe with a flask

tucked in the folds,
a scarf still reeking of cheap perfume,
a tuxedo waiting for a night that has passed,
a silk dress with a bullet hole.

In their pockets
a phone number, a pressed flower,
a lottery ticket never checked,
a note unread,
an unopened pack of gum—

small, unspoken losses

filed neatly among the starch and steam.

Nobody asks questions

at the cleaners - 
some stories don’t get endings,

just receipts nobody claims-
the winter coat in summer,

the summer dress in winter.

Outside, the breeze shifts the weeds
against the curb - 
the last sweater never claimed.
No name, no tag,
just the weight of something once needed,
folded into the dark.


New Smryna Beach, Florida