Its slender handle a swan neck over the tub,
like a low bird or amphibian that lives to peer,
to lurk, to sleep. Its electric umbilicus rooted
to the wall. As with a new infant,
its head is oblong, unreasonably shaped;
its mouth wide as its face; its teeth, an iron grate
that howls in my ear in the early morning.
Steam rises from a new bath, and I immerse
my body, think of the man I’ve left,
and the first time he took me by the lake:
a swan, hidden by the tangled overgrowth
of a wild August, dove from a low cliff.
We were startled into love, having forgotten:
where there is Odette, there is Odile.
Sarah Cozort is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Memphis.
Originally published in the FALL 2018 edition of the Helix.
