Scrubbing the hardwoods, softly
on hands and knees

Not as gently as you would a child's face
closer to how you would scrub your own
to free it of grit: efficient, mechanical

The pine floors were laid one hundred and seventeen years ago
refinished until they are barely thicker than paper
the gaps are wide enough in spots to accept the length of my pinky
where the filling has loosened and been swept away
during our tenure

So I know to scrub softly
because I have been stabbed by the shards
that will break off and bite
getting lodged so deep in a hand or the meat of a foot
that a second person is needed to pull it out

These are not on the scale of shards, but stakes, I guess
that you could drive through the heart of tiny vampires
if those were the things in the world that
we needed to fear

This is what I think as I crawl down the hall
between my office and my daughter's bedroom, careful
to scrub away all of the dirt but not so hard
that I lift any of the watery drips of paint from when she trudges
to the bathroom to change out her brush water

They look like fallen tears
if tears had colour and didn't disappear when they dried

I leave those be and don't clean them away