I
So in a fit of righteous anger
I washed the pots pans
plates bowls knives spoons glasses
even cleaned the kitchen sink and the drawers,
which I haven’t been able to do for a long time.
The leftover food I did not care to save
for the dog. I scraped it clean from the plates
and let it flush down the drain,
clogging it temporarily and flooding the sink
till the dirty water almost overflowed.
I thought happily of all the disorder
I was getting rid of, my anger ebbing
with the flush.
And for a moment, standing there,
I remembered another sweeping
of water, another sluicing, when a more powerful Being
deemed it right to let the water spill over
and flood His people, scraping everything clean
except a few fragments here and there:
morsels of food, bits of houses, leftovers saved
for family members searching for whoever
remains. I imagine He hadn’t been able
to do it for a long time and so,
in a fit of righteous anger, He did.
He must have been satisfied with the deed after,
the world being once more what it wasn’t
for so many years.
Only I did not feel any satisfaction
when the water drained, but a horror
at all that I let seep away, and the little
that I spared. I wonder
if He felt this, too.
II
So in a rush of remorse, I went
to our dog, dreading to see
twin points of blame staring at me.
The dog, on seeing my hands empty,
wagged its tail earnestly
and barked, barked with eagerness,
barked with a question.
My hands yearned then
for what it could have held
and given, food scraps, a few bits
of bone, anything but the clean
void it so ruthlessly pursued,
the hollowness it now shamefully
faces.
Then,
his tail wagging slower,
he stopped barking completely, and
faced the silence with me,
a long, slow stillness where all the questions
rebound, a hush so loud I longed
to break it with sound. Then what?
his eyes asked, and I knew,
knew in a flash that there was time yet,
his shiny eyes growing rounder,
myself mirrored in their depths. I’m sure
He knew of this, too.
