Home: How To?

Photo by Šárka Hyková on Unsplash

It might help to face eastward, orient 

my body to the rising sun, when it rises 

tomorrow. This house collects dust even 

on surfaces unseen and I don’t dust enough 

though there is odd joy in the collecting. Where 

is the rag, the former cloth diaper, the kind 

requiring pins, the kind my mother put me in, 

three vertical strips of cotton stitched together? 

She taught me how to change my doll, the fold 

across the back, the triangles of the sides, 

the pinning together. This is holy 

work, I tell myself, the triune cloth 

humble in my hand. I collect the bits 

of us. These rags clean the feet

of my muddied collie and blot 

in-heat blood from the rug. All those stains 

are mostly gone, though a child’s red-hot-

Dorito vomit still casts a shadow. In error 

I scrubbed one wet stain before extracting. Now 

it’s embedded forever. My fault. So often 

my fault. We are so eager to blame. There once 

was a mother whose open mouth shouted 

your fault at a boy. She never could apologize 

enough and now the boy dreams violence, won’t keep 

his pocket knife in his room. I’ll take up my cloth

in the morning light with my DIY liturgy: the washing, 

the blotting, the collect of a new 

day. May I extract first, then scrub. I will 

put on my apron vestments. 

This work is incarnational.

N.B. Collect: a prayer at the start of mass