My clothes
Might as well be scrubs
My hands
Pink and raw
From steaming water washes
Seemingly hundreds of times
During the dinner rush
Inescapable
That hunger
Returns every evening
Like a thin cat
Staring down a hole
For as long as it takes
Until supper peeks its head
Out from dirty depths
I draw in a breath
And the long sigh of time spent
Pours forth
That only I hear
Alone
In this chaos of my making
The surfaces, wiped
Again
Bare naked
Ready
For the next masterpiece
To materialize
First published in The RavensPerch AUG 26, 2023