Dishwater
Amanda Rachelle Warren

She likes to have someone to talk to, so
her thoughts will not be too loud, so
they will not bounce across the tile

of a small kitchen and reverberate
against the clink of glasses. The
tap’s unsteady flow becomes

a rhythm: the hand beneath the broken
skin of water squeezes the sponge
that swirls around each surface,

the wrist flips it, she quickly washes
the backs. Where they are stacked in
the sink they seem a monstrosity,

which is her own fault. She,
like her mother, thinks food a balm
to heal neglect: the dishes overflow

onto the countertop, they soar.
Sometimes an unreasoned anger
catches along the base of her neck

like needles, she handles a bowl
roughly, fingernail scraping away
the dried flecks of something she

cannot remember preparing. Often
her nose begins to itch, or a single
hair will become enmeshed

in a fork’s tines, perhaps, in the murk,
a knife will seize her before she
sees it, and the white edges of her
slit skin will seem foreign through
the suds. Today, she traps a black ant
beneath an overturned glass, before

considering that action cruel.
When it is released she crushes it
with the lavender detergent bottle.

© Amanda Rachelle Warren