how deep is your body
before hair grew in places battery-operated-razor-then-manual used to shave off, I would sit inside gray bathtub of large two-story house with basement and cobwebs and ghosts I called my parents—and pretend I was a submarine with tin-can belly and lips like a flask that hid inside soiled pockets.
before skin grew edible, sewing up its smoothness and smelling of wine when I picked at it enough, I would sing beneath the first layer of water’s flesh and hear the echoes of my unfinished voice merge with simmered air-sacks.
before learning how to properly maneuver a showerhead to resemble an open mouth with watering-can-tongue, I would squeeze tiny, yellow rubber duckie with small hole by its mouth to inhale water, and place against tiny, pink-ish, supple pussy with small slit between its lips to inhale fingers and gasp.
before I knew about nooses, pills, and vertical incisions, I took felt-tipped fingertips and placed against forehead as though textured with pores like a basketball, dunked down toward bottom of enamel tub until my lungs could not remember their function and then, I came up to the top where dry air meets wet deciding to try again some other time.
before developing a tolerance for fermented yeast brewed during the happiest of hours, I detached my jaws to resemble a kayak and paddled in water boiling away first two layers—
I drank dead skin.
I drank a bruise formed into a scab, one or two days away from falling off naturally,
which water pressure and my impatience tore off, watching it float into flesh-flaked tub.
I drank the juice squeezed from fuzz-free thighs.
I drank the shampoo rubbed into my scalp to eliminate tangles that never seemed to go away due to lack of brushing.
I drank the thoughts plunged into the deepness, including consideration of personal expiration date.
I drank until I had to pee it all out and then I did and I drank that too.
before I knew bathtubs can be big enough for two, I spoke in several voices that made me feel less lonely. I clustered my fingers together and curved my hands to resemble open mouths, talking. I made up varying lengths of time in which I needed to remain plunged inside the bubbled-liquid—
to burn away the badness, when wrinkles resemble something smooth again.
when tiny, yellow duck makes tiny, pink cunt come.
when I forget about the need for razorblades.
when I run out of songs.
when I am clean
enough.
Aimee Herman 