What Cleans

I knelt on the tile with a bowl

and a box of borax. The coat

spread flat beside the tub —

fourteen dollars, thrift store, a throat-

colored stain near the collar,

someone else's wine soaked deep

into the weave. I mixed the paste.

The mineral smell rose, steep

and chalky, and the door it opened

wasn't in the room — it was her house,

my grandmother's, Saturday,

her scrubbing the linoleum, her blouse

dusted white to the elbows,

knuckles raw, the borax grit

under every nail. She cleaned

the way some people pray — with spit

and patience, on her knees,

believing things could be returned

to what they were. I worked

the paste in circles. My thumbs burned

a little from the alkaline.

The stain gave up its color slow.

I loved this coat the way you love

a thing you found — irrational, a low

and private love, the kind

that makes you kneel on bathroom tile

at midnight, scrubbing at a stain

that's older than your ownership. A while

passed. The paste dried white

across my wrist, my cheek

where I'd wiped my eyes — I was

crying, though I couldn't speak

to why. Not grief. The posture,

maybe. The kneeling. The slow

circles of my hands on wool

like her hands on the floor. Below

my knuckles the stain was lifting.

The wool came through, dark and plain.

I looked like her — chalk-faced,

kneeling, saving something cheap again.

And I couldn't get up.

Not yet. My hands kept going.