Clean

"to wonder at order
and never wonder at ruin"
- D. Bonta


Sometimes I envy 
the plain white lines 
and pale planks of wood 
on the floor of a magazine 
kitchen—everything stacks 
in tidy tiers with hardly 
a bolt or a nail in sight. 
The sun is always streaming 
gently into other rooms 
with no sense of wild
dishevelment. If 
there are clothes 
on hangers, they are
colorless and shapeless 
as if no shoulders 
had shrugged them on, 
as if they were illustrations
of the word garment, made
from cotton or linen
or wool. There is not a hair
in sight, nor a wastebasket
overflowing with shredded
papers and bills. Not a dent
made by two heads 
on the pillows, 
not a rumple in the sheets
that must have draped 
at night over intertwined 
legs. And yet part of me
is seized by the desire 
to be overcome by this 
clean wash of absence:
as if the empty
fireplace never wished
for the roar of fire, 
as if the windows were 
never licked by rain; 
as if each knife
and fork and plate 
in the dish rack 
never held a thing
that once lived 
before being rendered
into pieces. 
 






 

In response to Via Negativa: Disorderly.