Notes from Exile: Washing Dishes
Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.
I included the poem below at the end of my post on Prison Camp this week. I’m told many readers didn’t make it that far.
Because it feels so bound up with that experience—and with the small, grounding rituals that make confinement survivable—I’m publishing it again here, on its own.
WASHING DISHES
What is there that I like about
washing dishes;
and I do.
Is it the water flowing warm
and steady,
washing like disappearing
ink,
or the chalk on an old-fashioned
blackboard,
the leftover leavings
from the shiny
trays.
Or maybe just the whole
process,
from the loading of the bubbly
soap,
to the final smooth wiping
down,
the silky stainless
steel,
and the solace of tactile
things.
For readers interested in longer reflections on justice, incarceration, and exile, my essays are linked here at Minutes Before Six..
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