stop bath
most of my regrets have to do with
water,
light filtered through shower curtain,
your skin like yellowed paper.
i sat on bathroom tiles cold
like clammy hands i didn’t want
to hold
and waited for you.
i didn’t think to be embarrassed then.
neither of us could sleep
that night. the floorboards creaked
and only now do i feel guilty
about sneaking into bed with you.
but that was months ago.
in a room i’ll never see again
parts of us have begun to die.
they say that every
seven years your body replaces each
cell it has ever known.
soon i will be new again.
some nights in my dorm room
i wake up crying and there’s
nothing humble about it.
when moonlight spills across my
bed like ilfosol-3, gets caught in my
throat like a soreness,
it isn’t because i miss you.
rather, the dark room at
my old high school where i used tongs
to move your picture from one
chemical bath to another.
in a room i’ll never see again
your face develops right in front
of me.
stop bath, 2014 by Allegra Lockstadt
Copyright Credit: NOTE: This poem is part of “Pethetic Little Thing,” curated by Tavi Gevinson. Read the rest of the portfolio in Poetry’s July/August 2015 issue.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2015)