"Bathtub" by Laura Rothman
Bathtub
I lay in a bathtub and
catalogue a life led and a life to lead.
My legs turn red with hot water
and my throat grows parched.
I wish I could write music to scream and
yell torment torture inequality.
But a poet’s pen speaks in
whispers and murmurs of a note passed
between friends in the back of a classroom.
Dissonant tunes are banged out on my mother’s
upright piano when no one is home.
I make noise—loud noise to rouse the neighborhood.
Look! I’m here!
No one but my dog hears and his
inquisitive head peeking through
stair rails is not an affirmation
of my existence.
I’m just a black and white shape
against a black and white background.
Will someone kill me here so I can
be immortalized in paint.
A modern Marat in my family’s tub.
One hundred years later an art historian
might find it. With astute observation claim:
“Oh, that’s not what she looked like” or
“Doesn’t the blue palate scream apathy?”