The ***** dishes sit in the sink,
piled up,
like the thoughts in our skulls
or feelings in our fingernails.
And sometimes we clean them,
but more often than not they just sit there,
in the sink, in our kitchen, in our cold
little apartment on Pennsylvania street.
And we pass each other in hallways,
saying something like "hello" or "how's it going?"
or maybe nothing at all.
The ambulances drive by
and sometimes we hear them,
but mostly we pay no mind.
The nightly news plays in the background,
but I don't know what they are saying anymore
because I can't distinguish the news anchor's
words from the ambulance siren.
And we gaze through our microscopes,
looking at the content of our lives
on a fragile glass slide
upon which squirm the infinitesimal
bacteria that we took from the sink.