In The Bathtub

I cried in the bathtub tub tonight, with its vast empty space. Room for me and the rest that has no mass but its weight overwhelms. It wasn't the tub that set off the tears.

It was the walls.

I've always hated large, blank spaces. That's why I fell in love with art. Filling up the emptiness with color, with texture, with anything. It's the nothing that I'm afraid of. I'm afraid to feel nothing, to be nothing. Don't you remember being seven years old, watching The Neverending Story for the ninety-eighth time, and being overcome with fear over the Nothing? How something; not blackness, not whiteness, not even air, could kill everything? How Artax died, died because he sunk into the sadness and couldn't fight anymore?

These walls remind me of what I can't overcome. Why I'm still sad about falling asleep with the light on because you forgot to tuck me in and say goodnight, again. How that's all I wanted, one minute of time with you. It being more important to crack open another beer and watch another episode of Law & Order. How I don't know how to forgive. How money isn't everything, but it's easier to say when you have it. How ever since you left, I've cried. How I don't know if that means this is real or I'm losing my mind. How I am constantly apologizing to you for no reason, but I refuse to apologize to almost everyone else. How I forget to trust my instincts and what the dreams mean.

I sat in the tub thinking about how my legs looked too long to be my own, how it would feel to turn on the faucet and feel my cutoffs wet against my body, how I'd never been in a claw foot tub before. It reminded me of sisters. Washing one another's hair, trying desperately to be adults. 

I'm trying. I'm trying. As long as I never stop trying, maybe the walls will disappear into nothing