Tonight is the night when I will finally sleep in the bathtub. I will fill it to the brim, and immerse my entire body into its murky water. I will leave my eyes open, and the bathroom will look more translucent than it ever has before. The tiles of the walls will sway and move and dance and the lamp overhead will look like the sun. Or, at least, how the sun is supposed to look---clean and blind and temperamental---because I have not seen the sun in a long, long time.

Before I fall into a deep slumber and venture to the watery garden of my nightmares, my poems will take up pages upon pages of a notebook. It will bleed bathwater, and thus the poems will be impossible to read, but that is okay, because nobody should be given the punishment of reading them---not even me.

And before my poems take over my tattered, loved notebook, I will gaze upon my reflection in the water---although not in a conceited way (I am far too unpleasant to the eye to be conceited). My face will be distorted, of course, but it won’t look as abnormal as it usually does. It will be covered in water, and I won’t be able to tell the difference between my tears and the water that clings to my skin and soaks into my brain and cleans my feet, which have been dirtied by forgotten, doomed wishes---wishes that I made on birthdays and wishes that I made when the clock read “11:11” and told me, “It is now time to forget everything but what it is like to be hopeful.”


When I wake up, water will have filled my eyes and ears, causing me to be both blind and deaf, which is alright, because then I will never have to look at my scraggly reflection or hear my rusty voice again. The water will be heavy, so it will cause my head and eyes to roll backwards and I will stay like that forever and never get the chance to empty the bathtub.