In patches

I had not mopped or swept the floors in months. I had used paper towels when there was a spill and hoped that eventually the entire apartment floor would get wiped up this way. This method of cleaning the floor, in patches, I imagined was like writing a poem every day until you eventually said everything about the human condition there was to be said. But it didn't really work that way, even in poetry; grimy corners remained while certain floorboards got burnished to a slippery, hellish gleam.

--from A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore