You get in when it’s 

lava, 

you like steeping in an inferno. 

A teabag absorbed in 

agony for too long brews bitterness;  

you are the bitterest. 

Mother yells for laundry, 

so you banish your dirty clothes to the 

tiles. 

Toes un-curled and mouth un-frowned, you plunge in 

rear and

bow. 

You add the liquid that expired in your late

childhood

tipped over in the voids of the closet. 

Lavender dream 

drops, 

bubbles form on the surface of the 

magma you filled the tub with— 

like a baptism. 

Rocky coals charred red like father’s elbows, 

ashen with creaks and

cracks: 

your home’s 

floorboards. 

It whispers and puckers in

crude rashness  

 and your skin begins to grow 

scales. 

You sink below the surface, 

blind like your darkened bedroom— 

stolen nightlight. 

You imagine you are a 

drowned 

girl  

found in the lake by a cabin in Rochester. 

Face bloated with water, textured flesh 

dancing  

jovial on your cheeks. 

You like it at the 

bottom 

of the bath, 

of the lake, 

on the granite, 

on the sand. 

Where it’s quiet, 

diffused, 

no frilly dress left to 

bless your bones. 

No God left to

appease.