Bathtub Poem

The anemic gray bubbles
nibble at my edges
encased in the white acrylic bathtub.

They nibble at the tension,
caress the tissue,
unfurl the fibers.

They weigh down my eyelids
and I go blank
until I see black.

I'm floating--
gray bubbles fade to celestial bodies,
warm water evaporates in a vacuum of air.

I sense the tethers once securing me:
lines stretched to the North, South, East, West,
ropes pulled thin by eager independence,
strings snapped in all arrays,

Each snap tugged me to the left, right, front, back:
an inch, a centimeter, a millimeter,
rocking me with a maternal rhythm.

My eyes, fixed to the distance,
focused on some ethereal destination,
only wavered after decades of snaps.

The strange weight of the final tethers,
only two, extend
to the East and West.

The lines tauten and
the fibers elongate
until one snaps.

And I am a planet
spinning off its axis
defying the laws of nature--
but not the law of the last tether.

The last line gives me gravity
transforming my spin into a rough rock
until my eyes can fix on the distance again.

The last tether reaches beyond the distance
and I release it without a snap.

Spinning, I have no gravity:
I am free from those laws.

My eyes are no longer fixed
but closed, secured.

And I go blank
until I see black.

Then the anemic gray bubbles
nibble at my edges.