By Richard LeDue
I.
Learned too late in life how we aren't supposed to fill pots with hot tap water before we boil them, but my younger self believed in this time saving brilliance, before accepting sometimes being cold healthier.
II.
Smiles among dishwater bubbles seem to tell lies about everything being alright, while 1970's chain smoking wives try to forget the coupons they forgot at home standing in line at the supermarket, pretending the canned goods and all the other things for sale don't remind them of strange men they never noticed until an unwelcomed “hello,” meant to mean something more to the men than being polite.
III.
The leaky pipe under my kitchen sink could easily be a metaphor for how we swallow too much in life, only to eventually crack or rust or degrade in the appropriate way, but the alternative would be the sort of dryness that hydrates mirages on our deathbeds about the things we wish we never said.
IV.
The water going down the drain is a kind of miracle, if you want something to pray to other than the usual gods, who are above dirty dishes left over night that keep you awake because you were always taught an empty sink important as a clean soul.
V.
It's impossible to drown in a glass of water, yet I watch the faucet as if my kitchen a widow's walk, and wonder why the sunset seems more at home on the wrong side of my Venetian blind, or why fishers believe it bad luck to photograph their boats on those mornings when I manage to leave my house, especially considering how my anxiety long ago mastered the dead-man's float inside whatever fluids erode the beaches of my mind.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 