There’s a Body in the Bathtub and She Looks Just Like Me
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![There’s a Body in the Bathtub and She Looks Just Like Me](/generated/1920w-16-9/55b0d39b-f4a1-4095-b3c8-a66fbff1bae2-jpg.jpg?1716456632)
Seeing strange creatures floating in the water
I knew it was time to go fishing in the bath.
Gathering tacks, needles, safety pins,
The tools of my trade
I made myself a hunter.
There’s horror in the water, though I’ve yet to
make a catch.
Blood and guts, things left floating for months
A body that bears a strange resemblance to
mine. Bathroom doors stay closed and brown water sours.
Touch a surface and I’ll tell you what
lingers.
Your fingertips are sticky.
No water from the tap, rinse your hands in the bath
Don’t think about what festers. Don’t think of movement Don’t think of things that grow, that slither,
And for God’s sake, don’t peer at the maggot-eaten caverns of my eyes and search
for your own blue.
You don’t have to visit
The door stays closed
And I, the body in the bath
Don’t cry out.
You shake me from my sleep
Slap my cold cheeks
Shake bloodless limbs
and beg me to tell you
How different we are
Let me decompose
Your turn will come.
I enjoy the shiver of water picking apart
my cells. Relax your muscles, and know
That you are just a mass of dirt. I see seeds sprouting in Your armpit and earthworms on your breast
The world is rotting you
Join me in the water. Tree-trunk-coloured, mosquito larvae squirming
If you could sew closed your crevices you would
I know because you tried it on me
I bear the scars
Even on my rotted form
My hands remember where you burned them with scalding water And my flesh remembers the sting of sanitiser in fresh cuts
My arms recall losing flesh to your untrimmed fingernails
My belly remembers the shape of your slamming fist
You had imagined in me
A parasite that wasn’t there,
Still,
You pummeled my pelvis
Until you were sure there was no life
In my bloodless womb.
When there was red in the water
I could have cried for joy
Were it not for the creeping thought
Like swamp mud closing around your toes
That the risk was now real, not the imagining
Of a frantic child
There’s blood in the water
Trash, beer dregs, used tampons
Everything I feared was on the bottom of my shoes. Dead now, I don’t mind
Though I can see you flinching
The way you do
Away from door knobs and cup rims.
I gargle mud and drink the spit of strangers,
Don’t be horrified
One day, you’ll decompose
Or your panicked organs will sit in someone else’s body
And, in any case,
You and I will merge
And these creatures will enjoy your flesh
As they have relished mine.
There’s no catch for you here,
You’ll never get your hook between my lips
No other festering pond will yield better results
So rot.
No one loves you for your cleanliness
No one loves you like I do,
Your prey,
The filth that meets your gaze
From the bathwater