A Story Kiki Told Me About Starch

When it rains, he thinks of the cleaners, the shop
smothering with steam presses, the breathable air

leaching starch. What a pleasure to walk out
the front door to an offshore breeze

salty and cold. Any direction made sense,
uptown or toward the beach. Any place

waves broke within earshot and swallows
patched their mud nests above him. That day

the crazy lance corporal puked his guts
on the counter, slammed down his laundry,

shot himself in the head. That day.
No one on the sidewalk saw through

the fogged-up window. No one in the back—
blind-stitching trouser cuffs, bundling fluff-dry

in blue crinkly wrap—heard a thing until
the second round of screams

from the high school girl at the till.
She dragged her way to the back, small red

planets on her sleeve. She’d been screaming
since it happened. He’d been sewing red chevrons

on a pair of dress blues. What happened next
made no sense at all, how she exited

to the alley, leaned over the hood of a car
like she was praying, looked up between

the backs of buildings at one cloud
like she was praying, until the policeman

with a small notebook asked her to come inside
and sit down, and she said No, let’s talk out here,

and he said No, standing at the door,
waves of heat pushing their way around him

into the alley’s fetid air. No, he told her,
you need to do right now what I say.