Purity

There is no purity in our house,
we are dirty like cats in the litter.
We get where we’re going just
the same. Our windows aren’t
clean, full of smudge and sweat.
There’s dirt on the floor, dust on
the salmon colored wall, a fish-
bone left over from dinner stand-
ing like a wood splinter in a crack
on the table. After a long day’s
drive through and over roads and
bridges, the brightly lit tunnels
travelled by slow buses and aging
automobiles, our feet walk us in
together with new dirt for the
floor, old earth to wash away
down the pipes. Every day,
every week, every year, we
get here together like discard-
ed paper cups blown toward
the corner of the cracked parking
lot by the wind. This is the way
we work, we play, so imperfect-
ly—the way cities should be built
out of the rough of the earth, the
way the earth was born from the
collapse of brighter, purer things.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua