Lift the glass half-glued to the vegetable crisper by caramelized soy sauce spilled seven years ago and never cleaned because you had better things to do. Ease it gently into the soapy bath waiting in the sink. Carefully guard its sharp corners, knowing it shares your own fragility, is as likely to slice your tender layers as you are to chip or shatter its transparent soul. Massage the stains and debris from its face, slipping the sponge below the water’s surface to pull the suds up and over, delicate as a sacrament. Love again this small servant you had forgotten, ignored for so many years but who still covered, still crisped, never questioned or failed.
Kelly Vance attends Eastern Kentucky University’s MFA program where she received the Emerging Writers Award for poetry. She is Chair of Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Annual Student Poetry Contest. Vance incorporates conscious leadership concepts into her writing, mentorship, and her professional work as a psychiatrist.
