Falling Dishes

 Everyone is doing their own thing. Games. Puzzles. Coloring. 

I walk to the kitchen to get a drink. 

The breakfast dishes are still dirty in the sink and spread across the counter. 

Sticky cereal sugar on cracked white bowls

Crumbs of toast

Hansel and Gretel trail to the toaster

After a sip,

I grab the electric blue dish soap.

Small bubbles float away

mini hot air balloons in the kitchen sky

as I soap the faded forest green dish rag. 

Warm water on. 

warm to hot.

and I scrub. 

wash away the past

the memories.

down, down, down the bubbles and the stuck on food

down, down I look

down to the dishes.

I rinse the frothy bubbles and carefully set the dishes in the drying rack

the one that doesn't drain out the bottom.

It is getting full

and I keep washing.

clanking as they layer upon themselves in the rack

careful not to crack any more than are already.

They shift.

They move.

They change.

The cutting board shifts back and falls out of the rack

onto the counter

slapping, clacking,

hitting the bottles still drying from yesterdays washing

hollow plastic bellowing against the countertop

hitting the lids of said bottles

and lids roughly rolling

onto the stove top

and stopping.

black plastic resting on ceramic white. 

It's quiet again. 

Water still running

bubbles witnessing and slinking away off my fingers

as if to hide away 

no testimony 

no eyewitness anymore.

Out of my control,

I did the best I could

as gingerly as I could

to handle the dishes

what was precious and breakable

yet

they shifted all the same

and I was left in the quiet to watch what was left

and to pick up the pieces.

the dishes got clean

the dishes got finished

and I washed my hands of it.