She ran a hot bath
so she could be alone.
Bubbles, like dead fish
on the surface were quiet.
She listened beneath,
the tap was a waterfall.
And she had become
Maelstrom.
A whirl pool in the center of some world,
in another universe,
where those fish were alive
and they could converse.
They loved her, they said,
but what did they know,
“stupid fish,”
she said, “liars leave me alone.”
They clung to her and stayed,
experts of exfoliation,
they cleansed her,
gave her new skin,
the wing of a fish,
her own tail,
something to move forward with.
But her eyes were closed.
The entire time her eyes were closed,
her face wet with the light in her bathroom
and the tears she could not shut in.
She drained the water that she could not move
that Sunday afternoon.