For the reading-impaired, an audio edition: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0tORG9lASLA



Twelve by twelve we march, sounding with cries of:

"Sweep left. Sweep right."

"Maid Troop - Forward!"

They are uniformed.
They are we, and we are all alike.
What has made us so?
We are Maid Army, and you are we.

Ours is a world that begins with a uniform. An ironed uniform with garters, and a lace head-dress with a singular consciousness beneath it.

Well dressed. We are all alike.

We were but children, years ago. Some of us children now. Possessed by a marked cleanliness. Driven by that endless rote: sweep, lift, place, repeat. Fascinated by the aprons that adorned those we admired as a badge of their akin desire for order, cleanliness, and fashion.

We dreamed of that broom. We hungered for that apron. We are all alike.

We have banded together today. We have found eachother. We compliment one another seamlessly, and think with an unwavering likeness. We do what we agree with. We fail where we all fall short. Not because have fallen into dissent. Not because we have ulterior motives. Not because we did not prepare.

We win because we are all alike. We fail because we are all alike.

And then it happened. I donned that uniform. You donned that uniform. We marched, and we rushed through the streets like heroin in the veins of an addict. We are a singular, well-dressed and clean pulse sent out like a distress signal. We are the amending of day to day incompetence and prolonged dissatisfaction. We belong. We are familiar and yet we have never met. We think alike and yet we have exchanged no ideas prior.

For we are Maids, and we are all alike.

We are all alike. We've been pressed into suits, labcoats, and on occasion stripped bare before our peers when we have longed for nothing more that than well-starched dress. The dress of this uniform - no pathetic quandary perused in a second-hand shop. We have been dominated by Butlers and the unqualified. The unprofessional. We few - we precious few - that offered the world purity and lace filigree, and shared our works amongst willing pupils that would one-day face the same woes that made our feet leaden.

This is our world now. The world of the polished floor and the ironed lapel, clan of the clean. We force the use of a service pre-existing without demanding pay for the correction of barbarity, filth, and gluttony, and we are called militants. We amend, and we are called soldiers. We embrace the weak-bleach cleaning solution, and we are called guerrillas. We exist without skin tone, without nationality, without religious bias, and we are militants?

True, We are militants. Our war is against grime, idiocy, and those who would leave our siblings dressless and pressed into a world that does not understand them. Our war is waged judging people by what they say, think, and leave in the sink, not what they look like.

I am a Maid. You are a Maid. And we are Maid Army. I may one day fall. My garters will be stripped of me, and my dust-pan confiscated. But they shall not stop us. They cannot stop us.

For we are Maids, and we are all alike.