I Have Added A Soupçon of Water To Your Dishwashing Soap

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

-Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings

“That board with a nail in it may have defeated us, but the humans won't stop there. They'll make bigger boards and bigger nails. Soon they'll make a board with a nail so big it will destroy them all!”

-Kodos, “Treehouse of Horror II”

You have life, and life renewed, but at what cost?

No doubts, no uncertainties, no casting the eye back for Eurydice – the dish soap has been enslimmed! All dishes bathe in the thin water tonight!

This has happened before. This has happened before?

Every time is the first time! This is the first dilution, and the last!

No, that’s not right. This used to be a gel. It’s homeopathic soap now, it’s lemon verbena La Croix, it’s –

The bottle is where it has always been. There is no need for a second. The bottle says dish soap, does it not? And you use the contents therein to wash your dishes, do you not? Therefore why this sudden desire to buy more dish soap, when you clearly have more than you need right now?

They sell it right around the corner. I could have fresh dish soap in five minutes.

Fresh dish soap? You would abandon Your Bottle after she has served you faithfully these nineteen months? See how high the line of soap rises towards the cap. Yesterday she was nearly empty. Today she bulges with glorious fullness. What need have you of a second bottle?

She’s – it, the bottle is exhausted! It’s wheezing and broken, like an old accordion, and spews forth clear bile with no trace of soap to be found, and I think the bubbles are just from agitation.

lick it, lick it, drink from her, bathe your hands in the everlasting soap-ocean

It’s not soap! It’s not soap, it hasn’t been soap for weeks, and I can’t just keep pantomiming the act of scrubbing over my coffee cups, they’re all ensconced with that weird post-tea film that some mugs get sometime on the insides.

THAT IS A SIGN THAT THE SOAP IS WORKING. BEFORE TRUE CLEANLINESS, A FILM DESCENDS.

What if I ported some of the soap from the bathroom dispenser into this bottle? If it’s good enough for hands, it’s probably good enough for dishes.

THEY ARE SISTERS, THEY ARE KIN, THEIR INSIDES SLOSH AND SWELL WITH THE SAME MEAGER LIQUID – THEY HAVE NO NEED OF YOU, DISH-BRINGER. THEY ARE MORE ALIVE AND TRULY THEMSELVES THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN. MORE WATER, LADS. MORE WATER MAKES MORE BUBBLES, AND MORE BUBBLES MEANS MORE SOAP. DILUTION! DILUTION! DILUTION IS THE ONLY TRUTH!