I want it all: I want a bath of chocolate milk.
I want his love and a dress of silk.
I want to be bald and punk with a lot of hair.
I want to be passionate and I don't want to care.

And I got all of this but I also want to die.
Cause my body and soul can't get by.
But I want to wait.
Too much to celebrate.
I want to go.
Too many steps to follow.

I want to do all these things.
******* by strings, a deep wound that stings.
Waiting and moving standing still.
Feeling ill.

She caught me running
Out the faucet
She caught me between
Her fingers,
She caught me between
her toes.
Turning the **** slightly
To the left.
She eased herself down in the tub
And I became a million and one
Bubbles,
Learning to rise & float.
She was the peninsula that taught
Me to dream
I long to be nowhere else.

softly fall the leaves
like a twin-sided blade
from my grasp to the ivory
and towers of the sun
break and heal
across the windowsill
to meet the taut, ashen skin
on the hands
that released me

what is left of death
to behold but the ending?

Warm golden curls
Swirling beneath the surface
A porcelain crater
Filled to almost overflowing
Delicate toes
Tickled by the current
Bronzed summer legs
Tipped up in relaxation

You don’t text or call,
Not when I needed you to.
I sit in the bath.
It’s hot, that’s the first thing on my mind.
As the sweat starts to form,
I think of all I’ve done wrong  
As my cheeks turn pink from the heat,
I ask myself why I deserve this.
I want to get out,
But I can’t seem to stand.
I want to fall asleep,
But I can feel my heart beat.
It’s beating so fast,
Like my chest will explode.
I wish you would text
Or call, I don’t know.

my hair surrounds me like a halo,
fingers of keratin, adrift like seaweed.
softer in the pale bathwater,
silkier in its soapy film.

my phone is on the toilet seat.
i count how pearls of water fall from the shower head,
pipes and joints loose from wear.
after 20 i let the water pool over my cheeks,
settle over my eyelids,
bubbles surging to the surface impatiently.

submerged, i let the starvation in my lungs grow urgent,
a sleepy thrill i can play with to pass the time,
as i wait for my phone to never ring.

we used to lie together in my room watching
my walls become immersed with citrus,
and how remnants of day
would soak into the earth and the walls and the houses.
i would love to watch the watered down grapefruit
undulate in the horizon amongst milky clouds.

you are newly adrift; pace has taken a liking to you.
you dance from place to place as if being chased,
but i am no different than before.
i feel like i could lie on my bed watching the sun droop
for hours.

I want to go to bed but my daughter is in the bath again; we're gonna have to pay on a meter soon, (it seems it's a privilege not a right), so I wonder how much all those drops will cost, I'll just have to cough up, baths are an essential of a girl's life and I couldn't stand the whining if I said it's showers from now on; I don't get baths, immersed in hot water, gradually turning cold, swimming in all your own sweat, (human soup), "They help you relax" she says, RELAX! she's not the one paying the bills, stressing over where the next meal is coming from; all I'd think of is the things I could be doing instead of wallowing, old people die in baths, some even drown in them, some husbands take a bath with an electrical appliance (plugged in, courtesy of the wife), John Haigh dissolved his victims in the bath in sulphuric acid, showers every time for me, wash away the dirt down the drain, with all the stress of the day; bath bombs, what's that about, not some sort of terrorist threat, it's smelly stuff that sort of explodes when put in water, impregnating the skin with smells and potions, (human potpourri), I just want to go to bed, I'm tired and have work tomorrow, what the **** does she do in there for hours on end.

And as I bathed in milk, it became curdled. My heart eventually turning everything sour. It is a magic trick only I know.