Each woman in chemistry lab for the first time
unscrews the bottle of acetone and smells
the shame of home, the crisp shriveling shock back
to nail polish remover on hardwood furniture,
cotton balls and girlhood and pretty we won’t
want to let last. Washing beakers, I am in my best
friend’s bed as she paints. I am in a Catholic church,
matching plaid uniforms, the priest cleaning
sacred vessels. Baby-faced blue, silver chrome,
lipstick red, she picks the polish from each nail,
lacquer dandruff in the pews, as he tilts beads
of holy water to catch the last precious drops
of blood wine, chalice clutched tight with both
his hands. I mirror the sway, the swirl in this metal
room where vents drone an organ’s harmony and know
all these places are the same place. All these
motions echo us home, cut to the hidden pink
of flesh beneath, still schoolgirls in plastic gloves.
We Use Acetone to Clean Beakers as If We Still Prize Purity
Elizabeth Coletti is an editor and writer from North Carolina now living in New York City. She is a recipient of the Louis D. Rubin Jr. Prize in Fiction and a finalist for the James Hurst Prize for Fiction, and her prose and poetry has appeared in the Pomona Valley Review, Panoply Zine, Neologism Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.