Poetry: I fell in love with a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant by Saturn Browne

I fell in love with a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant

I was sixteen and in California, the air heavy

with the scent of lust and pasta. It was not

a good choice for me. Allergic to Tomatoes. But

wasn’t life full of bad choices anyways? My love

in itself was dangerous—chasing after a 19 year old man

whose white hands were stained red and Green

from soap and 99 cent tomato sauce. Even his hands

screamed I am a real Italian. Every time we touched,

his hands stung my neck. my back. places not quite ready

—I was not yet ripe for the taking. Though to him,

greenery was pretty. And it was all I wanted: a chance

to escape from dirtiness and be clean again and again.

One time, after we kissed on top of the sink, he handed me

dishes and taught me how to wash their insides. My legs

hanging over the drain, he taught me how to clean myself

away from pasta water and my Un-Italian filth.






Saturn Browne (she/they) is an emerging Asian writer from New England. Her work appears in SoFloPoJo, Cutbow Quarterly, San Antonio Review, and more.

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