When I do the dishes, my thighs touch.

Small shiver. I am wearing a sweater but no pants, hoping the warmth osmoses downward, also hoping that no one walks through this alleyway tonight. My oven light is on and my blinds are open, so anyone could see my bare legs and my day-two underwear. But I hate closing the blinds, and I like the possibility of being watched. 

There is something perverted about coming home to do the dishes. The tomato soup coagulated on the pot, the shards of scrambled egg on the spatula. Twisting the sink’s knobs to get the water temperature just right, as if i am soothing it, shhhhh, soon you will be relieved. I love the look of a sponge when it's overused; breaking into crumbs of yellow and green, a symbol of laziness and poverty and maybe both. When I do the dishes I reconcile with a lifelong truth: I am gross. 

I am not thorough when I scrub. I leave food bits on forks and coffee stains on mugs. The water accumulates in the basin, but when I try to slide the catch-all out I realize the catchall isn’t even in the sink, but instead it is the severed top of a chickpea can that has wedged itself down there snugly, and I cannot pry it out. So I leave the rest of the dishes in the soapy, soupy, food-filled water and I hope that tomorrow morning, the water will have slowly dripped through the crevice between the drain and the chickpea can barrier. 

When I picture myself doing the dishes I am sexy. I have gorgeous thin legs and I wear a see-through white tank top. My hair is wavy and messy and falls over my face and when I push it out with the back of my hand maybe a couple suds float on top of it. If a man were here, he'd drag me away from the sink and put his hand down my underwear, but it is just me, and it's not the same when I do it, and when I do the dishes, my thighs touch. 

There wouldn't be so many dishes if I didn't eat so much. There wouldn't be so many crumbs accumulating for weeks on my countertops. Perhaps all it takes is the willpower to stop, but I do not even have the willpower to sweep the salt rocks from my floor, so they end up stuck to the bottom of my barefeet and then caught in the sheets of my bed. I do not even have the willpower to hang up the pile of clothes sitting on my chair. My bathroom mirror has toothpaste splatters all over it. My bedroom floor still has patches of dried vomit. This might be true until I leave this apartment. 

Maybe I'll never be beautiful, maybe I’ll always be gross, but I get aroused by touching the soggy food bits at the bottom of the sink, and when I come home I enjoy standing half naked in front of my window. There is nobody watching.