Deleting conversations in Mac Messages

Call me fastidious, maybe I'm OCD. But every once in a while, my accumulation of text message conversations grows so large that I am compelled by voices in my head to examine each one. And, after such examination, if I conclude I can continue my existence on this Earth without that conversation, then I take some unnatural pleasure in deleting it.

Here's where things get difficult. Seems like I should be able to simply navigate to the conversation and press the delete key. I'd even settle for Command+Backspace. But no. Starting with VoiceOver focus on the list of conversations, the steps to delete each one are as follows.

1. Interact with the list of conversations.
2. Focus is on the first conversation in the list, not the one adjacent to the one I just deleted, so I must navigate to find where I left off.
3. Once found, I can invoke the delete operation, either by bringing up the context menu, pressing up arrow to the delete option, and pressing enter, or I can VO+Command+Space to open the actions menu, down arrow to the delete option, and press enter.
4. Either way, I get a dialog asking if I want to delete the conversation, and I must VO+Right to the delete option and select it.
5. This deletes the conversation.
6. But VO focus is now inexplicably left on the search text field rather than in the list of conversations, so I must VO+Right to that list.
7. Repeat all of the above for the next conversation that I no longer need.

By my count, that's eight keyboard commands per conversation, possibly more depending on how long step 2 takes. It seems ridiculous, but this appears to be how the Mac Messages app is designed.

Is there an easier way to delete text message conversations? AppleVis community, my sanity is in your hands.