La danse de plats

17 years of ballet never attended, toes bouncing, heels never hitting the floor, when she waves her arms soap suds fling across the room, hips blowing in a stagnant breeze like cattails at the lake down the road, she is nothing but dish-soap and music, single lamp following her every movement, grace of the graceless, straight lines and sharp curves, she scrubs the stove-top to an accordion movement in a language she’s never heard, and it’s something sacred, off key singing to instrumental lyrics, up to elbows in sponge water and greasy pots, it’s an art to have this much love for dirty dishes and clock-strikes-10 minute waltz of garlic-bread pan and left-over Perciatelli, joins the dishwasher hum and refrigerator buzz to squelching toes on fake tile, tambourine fingers and ribbon-dance arms, la robe de la Reine slashing calligraphy arcs through the yellow-gold breath of midnight-kitchen-dance-with-death-and-all-of-Hestia’s-angels,

If I’ve seen bliss.

It’s somewhere between 10 and midnight, basking in the balter of her dancing to the dishes

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