Ode to the mop wringer perched at the edge of the slop sink. Ode to the shelf that collapsed and its haphazardly arranged contents that nearly crushed my head. Ode to wrapping the vacuum cord around its proper vacuum cord hooks. Ode to the people who, in search of the restroom (one door down, on your left), occasionally find themselves twisting the knob to this decrepit throne room of cleanliness. Ode to the smiley face and the frowny face etched into the wall above the light switch that double as my mood board. Ode to the experience of ambiguous solitude while on the clock. A sort of un-limited multi-purpose off-limits escape button. Ode to the swirl stain that resembles the red squirrel I saw this morning at the gas station skydiving from a junction box and ode to the blue yellow green rags that I slide, gingerly, into the filing cabinet. Ode to the filing cabinet. Ode to its drawer of miscellaneous bin liners. Ode to its capital-letter labeling and sensible organization. Its confident, angular construction. Its chrome handles that never hesitate. Its duct tape, lug nut, pill bug and I wish I was the filing cabinet. I wish I could open up easy. I wish I was sometimes helpful. The foldable wet floor sign, the plunger’s commodiously ergonomic handle, the air freshener scented like anonymous spring flowers, the wintergreen wad in the grout loosed by a switchblade—ode to you, too. Glory of a bucket empty of primer. Paper towel pandemonium day in and day out and day out and day in and what I’m realizing is that the day is constantly depicted as either moving in or out so why not a day smack dab on the threshold of in and out, unchanging? A day freezing and melting at the same rate. Why not the day having the day off. Planning to let my co-worker know we might need more soon, I jot down the number of soap dispenser refill pouches in my spiral notebook and leave the page on his desk taped to the bottom of his computer monitor. Ode to the lack of formal communication channels concerning inventory inquiries. Ode to the thorough caking of dust and hair and leaves and garbage in the air vents on the floor in the hallway. Ode to the ugly white walls that are designed to look “realistically” dirty all the time or at least that’s what I was told when I started and someone caught me trying to scrub them like the scrub I am. Ode to the daily accumulation of overlapping handprints on the glass at the front

entrance. I do not feel alone
as I wipe them all away.
Vacuum carpets
I vacuumed yesterday.
Say sorry, dear,
the butterflies left early this year.

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This is another poem from when I was a janitor. I had this idea at the time that I was going to write a poem for all of the rooms I cleaned (which were also all numbered, hence the title "014"). I didn't follow through with that idea because I got lazy, but the poems would have all been structured like this one, which is a haibun I guess you could say. The haibun made sense to me because, and I'm simplifying here, normally they're like travel essays where the prose part gives the reader a hyper-specific description of a place and the narrator's journey through it, and then there's a tiny poem at the end that sends a fissure up into all the words above it.