Bathroom Digest

Are you nice to yourself in the time you spend in the bathroom? When I was a child my bathroom was where I would transform. I would go in, heavy with some raincloud on my shoulder, I would brush my hair until it was as smooth as a river rushing by. Then I would wash my hands, those always had to be clean before I would wash my face.

The water would dissolve the faces that got stuck on me, just like mom warned me about, faces green with envy, cloudy swamp water circling the drain, followed by angry red war paint, from the fight between my tongue and my teeth.

The bathroom was where everything would come off, it was the feather nest landing from a world of harshness.

Mom said I spent too much time in there, I may as well fit in my bed. I changed the color of my hair for the first time, on accident with peroxide and misinformation.

My new redhead persona for seventh grade was much foxier than I, timid, quiet, sweet, fuming, electrified, exhausted. None of that mattered in the bathroom, I had hardly noticed the difference in me, but everyone made sure to clue me in.

Is it always this way, mom? Do I change in the forest if I’m not around to feel it? Quantum physics is getting closer to no. people tell me I have changed, is it me or what they can see?

Some questions can only be taken off like a jacket on a chair, not so long as to be put away, but hovering enough as a menace to clarity. Cleaning up, unraveling, cleaning up, and unraveling, a dig through the ancient landscape of the mind.

When I was nice to myself in the mirror once it made my chest heave in a cry. We ask so much of ourselves all day, I talked to myself like my body was the animal I care for: “I love you, thank you, you’ve gotten me so far.” A tear breaks past the gate.

The crying set me free, there was a grain of sand rubbing in my mind again, until the blister on the heel, now its time to harvest the pearl. Such a pain can stop you dead in your tracks, when such a pain is finally seen.

Why does it hurt worse to look at it? The open wounds could multiply like cicadas in the summer. Or they could get better. Mom is far until I’m being bandaged up from love, until my jacket’s put on for me, or I wake under a newly placed warmth. My mom could never be mom, but she never wanted to be. I don’t know what my mom wants, but I’d like to see for me.

A life of laughing dinners and dirty feet, of soapy baths and wildest dreams, of love shared, and a dove’s wares.

I have given up on home. I am looking for my bathroom.