Bathroom Descendants

The dog is frightened

she will follow us anywhere

she would follow us right into the rain,

right into the August thunder.

 

Instead, she finds contentment beside us

on this wearied bathroom floor

in this small room

amid our feet

and the littered shelves

and the paint-stained tub,

she will follow us anywhere.

 

Into these small hours,

we talk

and it is not always pretty on the white tiles,

or even on the yellow

or pink or purple tiles.

 

Our childhood voices stream from us,

slither sadly from us,

we speak of times of beatings

and angry angry words

that we hardly understood

(the stuff of the small hours,

the barely-morning hours).

 

We have decided that anger wastes too much energy

such emotions are like addictions,

it is like quenching thirst with fire, you say

and I say that forgiveness is so much easier,

it is a better draught.

 

I wonder if maybe we will learn from the mistakes of our parents,

if maybe our children will learn from ours

maybe on and on

until there are no more mistakes

mistakes do not exist

and our descendants will understand the importance

of nights lying on bathroom floors,

of careless towels

hanging like willow branches from the towel rack,

of rugs dampened with nighttime cleanings

the stripped grime of the day.

 

 

They will understand the importance of almost touching,

of looking sometimes at hands instead of eyes

and exclaiming at the colour and texture

the perfection of calloused hands,

maple rosewood stained hands.

 

They will understand the importance of speaking aloud,

and promising not to let the other fall.

 

These will be miracle descendants,

if they can say out loud the things they are thinking.

 

They will say that you do not deserve to fall again,

you deserve eyes on you

wide-open eyes

sleeping eyes

child eyes

wild dog eyes.

 

You deserve hands on you,

hands on skin

cold with bathroom dew

skin hardly worn

save for bites of your past

stitched up since they were torn.

 

You deserve to be free from artificial scent

to taste as you are

even without these nightly cleanings.

 

And you deserve to scream,

as desperately as lost children

to sing and to pound your heart

as loud as skyscrapers

to stomp like you are wearing boots in the rain

to clap all your body and find its instruments.

 

You deserve to hear the music of an August thunderstorm

reverberating in an empty house,

encasing us in this small blue room

with the frightened dog at our feet

for she will follow us anywhere

because she trusts us

because she has nothing to do with aloneness.

 

Gray does not exist here,

not in this small blue jewel that we have not lost,

that we will pass down to others

and they will be our bathroom descendants.