I’m doin’ the dishes for Leah.

No, Leah was not going to do the dishes;
I am doing the dishes because
Leah wants me to make her pancakes,
But I only have enough dishes for myself;
So I am doing my own dishes so
Leah may eat off of a clean plate.

If I were cooking only for me,
I would not bother to clean the dishes!
…
As I scrubbed my little, bluestone plate,
I thought of her-
How she said she never does dishes.

Leah eats finger food-
she even plucks sizzling, steaming onions
from the pan while they’re still cooking!
With her bare hands,
she slurps them down
in second-degree-tongue-burning style!

Maybe, some day,
Leah will see
that washing dishes
is just one of the mundane things
people do
throughout life.

Some wash their dishes
Thinking of their loved-ones
who have passed-away.

Maybe Leah will think of me in that way,
someday.

… Maybe.

Leah asked me,
“How much time, a day,
do you spend doing dishes?”

I thought of her saying that
While I cleaned this plate for her-
I pondered her mental disconnect about it-
How people
can bring themselves
to immerse their hands
in all those germs and nastiness?

I thought of this
and held back the tears-
while scrubbing that dish for her;

because I knew.

As I cleaned that dish,
I began writing
the future story,
(in my mind,)
that:

Once upon a time,
Leah will pick-up and leave here-
Leave me-
Never to come back again,
Never to be so frequent
With her visits, her rants, her smiles
and, even, her woes.

Very, very soon, Leah will be gone.

As I scrubbed that blue plate,
I reminded myself:

“All I want out of life
is to prepare food
for the one I love-
… I get to do that, now,
… but,…”

I held back the tears
and completed my painful reminder to myself, …

“She does not love you!”

At times, she assumes her woes
are more insurmountable
than my own;
however,
My greatest woe is my knowing
that our eyes shall soon
never meet again.

Leah’s eyes –
They shine and glimmer
as if two stars
from Orion’s Belt
have escaped their constellation
to take throne
upon the most
beautiful place
known to the universe!

I held back the tears,
washing that dish,
Knowing that those eyes would soon
shimmer no more upon me;
Glimmer no more in my sight;
Blink neither a tear of sorrow with me,
Nor open in excitement at me!

Leah will never realize
How I feel about her;
But maybe, some day,
She will remember me
and cherish
the time we shared together.

My greatest woe is not that Leah is leaving me;

My insurmountable woe is knowing that
she does not Love me.

As I washed that dish,
I thought of how her future-life
will be- without me.

I told myself,
“Maybe, one day,
She’ll be washing a dish
And start thinking about me
and start enjoying washing that dish
in remembrance of me!”

After I washed the dish,
I sobbed heavily.

…

{Just now, as I am
typing this poem,
Leah approached me
and placed my bluestone plate
on the table in front of me-
The pancakes I had made her-eaten, …gone!

“That was so good!” She smiled. “Thank you! I washed the dish!” She announced, proud to tell me!
(It was a precious moment! It made me happy!)}

As I carry-on
in life,
I continue doing the dishes
for that invisible woman
who’s swing sways,
abandoned and empty,
from a branch,
in the shade,
beneath the green tree
which grows solemnly inside my heart.

Chip Van Hassel