How many wilted bodies have plumped in this tub?
This ceramic, yellowing womb-tomb
hollow or else completely filled
with limbs, fluid and salt.
How many tendons have loosened in the heat?
How many hands unclenched?
From their bed, nails ascend.
I steep in the church of all religions.
I trace across water that is holy because of my humanness
and not in spite of it.
Grout tinged sepia in memory of transmutation;
I used to think it was gross.
I used to think people were generally cruel
then I remembered.
In Chinese medicine, the liver is considered The Seat of the Soul
perhaps for its purifying quality, for filtering crude matter in service
of a greater something;
my head submerged in biliary foam, rendered purged
by the tub—
society’s unembellished organ
more process than place, ritual
masked in mundane, it whispers,
Okay, yes. Come, lay...I know. I know.
I trust the tub knows people are generally good.
I trust the post-bath sediment layer
is made of more than dirt.
I have to be brave sometimes
and unclog the drain.