Bathwater

What was it like

To be sold to the highest bidder,

Your filial duty

Your only trait?

For the only pure love 

You’ll ever know to be

The complicity you share

With your chambermaid— 

The one who knows the nights

In which the bathwater should be boiled longer,

Drawn higher,

The bath salts made stronger.

How lucky to be free,

To choose the love we give and receive—

How unfortunate to know

That this is the exception;

How privileged to forget it.

The boiling water of the bath,

Forever associated with violation;

The scent of the lilies,

A reminder of womankind, 

Of the covenant.

The cover photo is "Le Bain", painted c. 1873–1874 by Alfred Stevens.

This piece was written following a visit to the Castle of Bragança in Portugal.

Below is a photo of me drafting it immediately, sitting on a low wall, right outside it:

Here is a photo of one of the notepad pages (now ripped):