When I was a girl in Beverly Hills,
and things were just beginning to get bad,

they brought handwashing experts to prep school
one day. There were two, and the two of them lectured

on proper procedure: how to turn the water off
while you lather, how to take a paper towel

and turn the water off for good, after rinsing,
with it on your hand, so as not to pick back up

the germs that were on you when all this began.
And I remember waterfalls, which the other

silver-spoon girls found essential: sharing by pouring
a little of another girl’s beverage into your mouth,

so that nothing touched her mouth, then yours, then hers.
I remember their bubble handwriting, how it curved,

and how the girls repelled the ground, and spit, and birds.
“Who knows where that has been?”

Who knows that about anything?