Sanitation

Toothbrush gripped in baby-fat fist,
I dutifully learned how it was done,
poised my brush to match the twist of wrist
on hers, apprenticed my hand to her wisdom.
The object of her bathroom craft: invisible dirt
on floor tiles. My site, assigned, was grout
between wall tiles, from whose slender spaces hurt
might come; buds of deathly disease might sprout,
and do us all in. If gray could be scoured germless,
if toothbrush bristles could scrub foul fair,
we might all be saved, even daddy, who was,
as usual, in his studio, finely stroking siennas
and ochres from the supple tips of sable hair
into the white, toothed grooves of canvas.