Sweet Potato Weather

Snow is falling hard enough to blur the parking lot. Big lazy flakes cling to the wipers and turn the world still until the plows ruin it. I stand under the neon Laundry Express sign a second longer than I need to, letting the cold find the gap at my collar and settle in like it’s claiming squatter’s rights. Nights like this make me feel younger and older at the same time: reckless enough to be out, tired enough to want bed by nine. I’m forty-nine. It’s half past eight. My fingertips are already going white.

Six years without a washer means I know this place like a second, sadder religion. Thursday after eight is heaven. Saturday before noon is hell. I’ve spent birthdays here. Breakdowns too. It’s the only place that never pretends to be something it isn’t.

Machine 6 is tumbling through two weeks of clothes: the jeans I keep hoping will forgive me, the hoodie that’s more pills than fabric, socks I’ll wear until they surrender. The air is all quarters and someone else’s softener, a fake-linen scent that doesn’t belong to anything in nature. Other people’s version of clean. Frost feathers across the windows and turns the street into a snow globe nobody asked to shake.

I’ve always chosen the harder way. Some people trip into mistakes; I commit to mine like long-term leases. Quit college because parties felt more honest than lectures. Drank through my twenties like tomorrow was a rumor. Married the guy who made the soft life look easy: warm house, top-range appliances, holiday menus planned over wine while the kids slept and we pretended the silence was peaceful. From the outside it looked like it should have worked. Inside it sounded like dishes breaking in the next room even when no one had touched them. Our last fight was over whether the dishwasher was loaded wrong, and whether I’d ever put my ring back on.

I walked out six years ago, with whatever fit inside two suitcases, without the gold band. Started over like a college grad who didn’t realize youth already closed the door. Except I’m not twenty-two. Some nights my use-by date feels close enough to tap my shoulder. Other nights I convince myself there’s still time to build something that doesn’t fall apart when I stop propping the walls. I’ve learned what grows in north-facing windowsills: anything with a decent will to live.

My kids think I’m magic. Lights come back on. Cupboards have the good snacks. Beds stay made with sheets that smell like the lavender stuff I buy on sale. Magic is just fear in cotton leggings and a calm voice. They don’t see the times I sit in the car an extra minute to pull it together. Some days I grip the steering wheel so tight my hands ache, waiting for the world to stop spinning just enough for me to walk inside without scaring anyone. I watch my own breath fog the windshield, proof I’m still here even when I don’t feel like I am.

Thursday nights we’re all just bodies keeping the machines company. Across the room the old guy gives his boxer briefs one last tired snap before folding them, same as always. The teen mom at Machine 3 sways her baby in that exhausted, endless rhythm, eyes half on her phone, half nowhere. And Mrs. Kwon glides between the tables in socks and Crocs, ace bandage on her wrist like a medal. She calls me Miss Robin even though my crow’s feet are older than her grandkids. I’ve caught her watching me before. Observing in that way older women do: assessing weather, not judging it. The night I nodded off waiting for the spin cycle. The morning the fluorescent lights made my eyes water. She never stares, yet sees everything.

I’m smoothing the last of the towels when she appears beside me. No ceremony. Just holds out a crinkled brown paper bag heated enough to feel through my numbness.

“Sweet potato,” she says, offering it with a barely-there lift of her chin. “For you.”

My mouth tries to shape a thank-you-no-thank-you, but she’s already walking away. She didn’t say it out loud, but the look was clear: you need this. Which is… alarming. What exactly about me says “potato intervention”? The bag is in my hands before the meaning catches up. For a moment it’s just a warm, weighted, confusing presence. Am I supposed to pay her? Free usually means someone’s keeping score somewhere.

What’s the protocol for being in charge of a baked potato in a laundromat? They didn’t cover this in high school, not even during the fake-baby unit when I let the doll’s diaper go nuclear.

I glance around, kind of expecting someone to claim a mistaken root vegetable. Nobody looks up. The old guy is still working through his underwear. The teen mom is still sway-scrolling. The machines keep rumbling.

My palms thaw as I cautiously cradle the enclosed spud. There’s a faint scent of caramel and care. I set the bag on the table beside my quarters. It feels unreal enough that I check the security camera, searching for a hidden prank crew.

Machine 6 buzzes. I fold methodically, the potato waiting in its bag. Every now and then I check it like it might vanish. Mrs. Kwon passes behind me once, sweeping the floor, eyes on the dust but aware.

When everything is sorted and stacked, I load the cart and push out into the night. The cold hits hard again, but my hands are warm from the dryers and the work. The potato rides shotgun, cooling through the side streets.

At home the apartment is dim. Not lonely exactly, but vacant in a way I feel in my chest. I drop the basket on the floor and carry the brown bag to the counter like it’s something delicate or stolen.

The potato is room-temperature now, skin slightly wrinkled from the cold. My first impulse is to wolf it down right here over the sink, same as every sad dinner for one. Instead I carry it to the couch like it’s the company I’ve been waiting for. Legs tucked under me, I don’t bother with a fork or even a plate. I just bite in, skin and all. Sweet, earthy, still tender inside. Ridiculous and perfect. Better than anything I’ve bothered cooking for myself in months.

I eat the whole thing and don’t save any for tomorrow’s lunch. Every last bite. The flavor is simple. Honest. It tastes like someone saw me there, and didn’t expect me to earn it.

I rinse my hands and turn off the kitchen light. Outside, snow is still falling, steadier now, covering the parking lot, the cart tracks, the whole damn night. The apartment is quiet, but tonight the quiet doesn’t feel like punishment. It feels like the world finally shut up long enough for me to hear myself breathe. I fall asleep with a trace of caramel still on the back of my tongue.

Tonight something small and good found me, and I didn’t talk myself out of it. I didn’t fuck it up.