We begin by bestowing unto ourselves this plurality that makes what we have to say worth speaking. We listen to each other, whisper words not into the empty humid air but into the helices of our ears. We sit in lukewarm bath water and pull our knees into our chest as the last of the bubbles pool and pop and fizzle around our body like the foam that washes up around rocks, rubbing against them, rubbing them smooth. And we shave our legs, make ourselves smooth and the water prickly with the residue of our shedding.
In this intimate us-ness of sharing a bath, our back spoons against our front, our head nestles into the niche of our own shoulder. We are a contortionist swan, using our own body to give our body comfort. We lean against ourself, run our fingers down past our hips, through the broth of the bath that contains soap and bubbles and more of ourself. When we scour our ankles, off comes a layer of skin and of dirt in sweet little pills, like yarn off a sweater. We rub these into our fingertips and swallow them.
And we tell ourself how sweet it is to be loved like this, how rapturous and radical and self contained it is to feel this love. How impossible it is! We ask ourself all the right questions, never "how was your day," or but how many times did you feel your heart lodge in your throat how many times did you go to the bathroom how many times did you shove your fingers inside yourself and when you did that, what did you find.
How tender is the flesh and how utterly worthy of love. And yet! What bite has this flesh, and tauntingly willing to be bitten in return. And and and bite it we do.