This is your first bath with a bath bomb. It’s pink and yellow and shaped like either a Mickey Mouse head or water molecule, you’re not sure which. Your wife won it in some contest and she doesn’t like them, so it’s yours now. You fill the tub and get in. You drop in the bath bomb, which starts to fizz.
The water is almost hot. You are much too big to be fully immersed in the tub, so you slide down and bend your knees as best you can to stay warm. You can’t remember the last time you took a bath. Someone once described bathing to you as marinating in your own filth. You notice particulate in the tub and hope that the bath bomb does its magic quickly. And it is working, fizzing and throwing small plumes of color out into the bath. The water is turning a deep rosy pink.
Your fingernail and toenail polish has also turned hot pink. Earlier it was a deep, sparkly burgundy. The nail polish is heat reactive, like one of those Barbies your sister always brought to the pool in the 90s. You think about what it would have been like to own a Barbie. You probably would have liked the heat reactive ones.
You look down at your body and strategically cover yourself with a couple of washcloths. One to keep the new parts out of the bath warm, another to cover up the old parts so you don’t have to look at them. You don’t even know what to call those old parts anymore. The word “prolapsed” comes to mind. You think about surgeries, about all the reading you have been doing, the pictures you have been looking at. You think about the person who called from your new insurance who started the conversation by asking what surgeries you wanted.
“…[she] is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
You learned phrases like this when you were a… little girl? It still doesn’t feel right. It feels like most people who believe those words wish you were dead. They can’t seem to comprehend that there are people becoming new creations every day in their midst.
You think about the friends that you saw at the queer bar event last night. You reflect on how you probably inadvertently cockblocked a few hookups. Gockblocked. Whatever. You think about how so many of your friends are losing their families as they become new creations. You think about the other friends who seem to be remade at this point, who are restless and want to move on. You fear that all of these friends will abandon you. Time for a deep, diaphragmatic breath.
Hooooooooo
Mmmmmmm
Mmmmmmmone two three
Mmmmmmmonday morning? Mmmmmmonday morning?
Mmmmmmmhiii, how are you?
MmmmmmmI like your haaaaat
You’ve been crying since you got into the tub, by the way. You woke up crying and decided to call in sick to work. You’re tired of pretending to care about software. You’re tired of tangling with health insurance. You’re tired of banks, of government offices, of doctor’s offices, of phone calls. You’re tired of researching standards of care, of drug administration methods, of bad studies with poor sample sizes. You’re tired of hearing about the people who want to kill you. You’re tired of waitlists. You’re tired of side-eyes. You’re tired of men. You’re tired of “so, how are you?” But there’s always crying. Crying is a form of grace. You feel selfish to cry, but it’s something you can really do well now, so you’re gonna do it anyway. There isn’t a kleenex box in reach, so you blow your nose into the bath bomb wrapper, a pile of tulle with a hemp drawtie.
The swirls of suds around your thighs that reminded you of the clouds of Jupiter have dwindled to spotty floes. The water is cold, and your nails are turning burgundy again, so it’s time to get out. You pull the plug and watch a whirlpool dance as the bath bomb drains away.