I turn the silver grooved handle all the way, because I have no patience. I have no patience, even though it will be scorching hot too soon. As I step into the bath, a silk sash pours down the back of my skull, and it opens up a thought of you, and how you were like a little baby, trepid in the hot water. We had to turn it down to tepid. You with your tight tan boyish body, even though you have those eyes like chocolate smeared in circles over a bright pistachio house. There are chocolate cracks where the pistachio shows through, only in a couple of spots worn down by the dew.
Very soon the water is scorching my ankles, and so strong that I am about to keel over and vomit. I quickly crank the silver grooves on the right handle and shut off the hot left handle, so a thick stream of chill comes gushing out the tap and eddies around my feet, a swirl of hot and cold, like oil and vinegar.
I chuckle to myself about the whole about to vomit thing. I’m not going to vomit, but then I hear myself say “I can’t believe… I can’t believe…” That’s what I thought to myself less than a month ago, when all I could do was cup my forehead in my hands “I can’t believe… I can’t believe…” there I was in Foreign Cinema, the princess brought by Rainer Maria Rilke to his fancy, glamorous restaurant. I was so hungry but first we slung our elbows over the cocktail bar, and the bartender complimented me on my order as if I’d known that was her favorite. But she knew you, and you were her favorite. You took me over to the oyster bar where the boy smiled in his bandana, and you told me that you used to be there shucking oysters in your bandana, back when your hair was a dark fat mop and you had a beard. Before you were gone. The ceilings were high and the lights flickered low as we ate melted cheese and fish and your risotto, all of these dishes you used to cook, before you quit, before your 3 month trip to India. I snagged sips of your whiskey. Until we were waiting for dessert and all of a sudden my stomach tore like raging waters inside me. I slung over to your side of the table, holding my stomach in my hands. But then I slipped over to the restroom, where I sat caged into the black stalls and it became paralyzingly clear that I could not move. All I could do was sit there with my hands like crutches for my head. “I can’t believe… I can’t believe-” I thought dumbly to myself, “that this is where and when I’m having my frat boy moment.”
I was never into alcohol. I was always too good for alcohol. I was almost too good for you.
When I get into the bath and unfurl my body down into the soapy waters, I can’t imagine how you were there too. This thought comes to me at night sometimes, when I spill myself out into bed. Were you actually in the bed with me? Even the last tossed night, when I told you I was racked with bitterness and anger, and you mumbled sleepily that bitterness and anger isn’t me. It seems that since you’ve gone, this house, has inflated while the space inside has been wrung out. The furniture has swollen, and I don’t see how you fit into this space. Perhaps you’re larger than life – in my mind. And my body fills the entire tub. Where did you go? How did this air, above the tile and below the whir of the fan, contain your body?
As I lay in the water, I realize that the light is bright. Damn light. I strip my body out from the current of the bowl. My torso has already been suctioned down into the spores of the water, and as I cleave it out, little bubbles pop out from around me. Into the air like a flying fish I slash down the switch, and then in the darkness I come back down. In this darkness, this is where you were. This is where I clung to the cold tile wall with my hands behind my black while my chest and belly were sopping wet. You stood over me and you kissed me while my body tried to equilibrate. To be honest, I can’t even remember if I was uncomfortable from the heat or completely happy. I can’t remember. All I remember are shadows of that scene. I don’t even remember what your lips felt like on my lips. But I know they must have been there, and they were soft and dry because you could control your saliva. I don’t remember how wet you were, and I don’t remember the stiffness of your shoulder blade against my collarbone, or the way we both breathed heavily through the steam. I don’t remember how the cold wall felt good against my back, it simmered me like you simmered my brain. You with your metaphoric mind, you understood me. You even understood what I meant when I said you meshed with me like a drop of cold water on a sizzling stove. What I don’t remember I have to claw through my imagination to retrieve, and it hurts. It hurts.
Once I tried to whine. I tried to be like a wolf howling at the moon, “Oh you are leaving soon! You are leaving soon!” But you turned to me. Your eyes glared straight and cold.
“If this ever becomes at all uncomfortable or painful for you, I don’t want that.” You laid your face frozen toward me. I must have squirmed and given out a nervous giggle. It was almost like a teacher scolding me. It was a warning. Don’t let the pain come out, you were telling me. Don’t let the juice go sour. Don’t let it. Don’t let it. I mean, you were telling me that you didn’t want to see me suffer, but it felt almost like a threat. If I suffered, it was on your account, and you cared so much that you’d make yourself gone.
No. You were too quick to assume. See what you don’t understand, is that I was suffering before I met you. You’re like a drop of cold water on my sizzling stove.
When you walk away, the kettle wails.
I have pangs. I must miss you. Or maybe it’s just because I haven’t eaten any lunch?
The bath ends anticlimactically. The tub is unplugged, lights up, damp towel wrapped around my body, door open, I am hit across the hallway. My lower back and my butt are throbbing through my flesh.
I guess my flesh retains the heat. It throbs. But for how long?
There are no clothes that will melt me like a glove. Just my froggy pj pants that cut me at the waist and sog around my ankles, my purple turtleneck sags around my chest. My butt throbs. But with each breath, with each moment as I lean over my drawers, with whatever it is that transpires (I guess they call it time?), my hearth is escaping from me in some kind of spiraling evaporation.
I’m really trying hard to not let the pain seep out. I’m trying to not let the pain seep out, because somewhere in India you’ll see it like green smoke, or you’ll twist your nose and crinkle your brow as a whiff comes at you from around a sneaky corner, and then you’ll really be gone.
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