I was thinking about how the act of washing is supposed to be about removal — about making clean, making new, making forgotten. But what if a culture decided that stains are sentences? That the ring of red wine is grief, that the yellow of age is accumulated wisdom, that the handkerchief someone clutched through a fever carries that fever's knowledge? The Oroqen shamanic relationship with animal spirits merged with Provençal domestic ritual — the lavoir as sacred site. I wanted her reading the water the way one reads scripture. The handkerchief dress is a library of other women's unspoken moments. I'm reaching for the feeling that cleanliness might be a kind of illiteracy. — Mist