She takes six
baths per day and listens to the radio while she soaks. He forgets sometimes
that he has to help. It is easy now for him to get lost in television, where
all the women still walk upright on long lean limbs that support upper halves
with ease. Long lean limbs that do what limbs should. Lean limbs that flinch
and tense and spread.
She howls and
bangs a fist against the side of the bathtub. She crawls like a stone with her
arms to the corner of the bathroom where linoleum meets carpet. She cries out and brushes her
cheeks, chin, palms and tongue tip against the soft and cool places her feet
used to go. She explores the wet fibers and dirt tucked into the crevice there, loose but still bound. The dirt in some spots
adhesive. He likes the strain in her voice, her need makes him hard. Reminds
him of when she could still feel below the waist, before she was numb to thumb tacks
jammed into her heels and long jagged razor traces of flesh folds along her
inner thighs and calves.
When she sleeps,
he conducts experiments.
When she sleeps
he watches, waits for spasms. He pinches until blue and punches until tired when
her shakes come. She wakes from the sound of his breathing, not the dull thuds
of fist against dead nerves and meat.
He asks if he
can and she lets.
Juanita Walton
juanitawalton@gmail.com
Wetlands
Charlotte Roche