Ritual Bath

Ritual Bath

Everyone is wet.

I’m frayed and dreamy

with painmeds

but done with sponge baths,

my skin’s gritty.

My team―husband, sister,

nurse, conspires a shower.

As if a sacred rite, they prepare

in silence. Soon, all three are barefoot,

pant legs folded up and tucked.

They roll me into a room of limestone tile,

prop me on a plastic stool,

a rosy heatlamp glows above.

My trolley of IV’s nestles in the corner

leashed to my wrists. Shoulder to shoulder they

maneuver, a crowded kindness,

soaked in warm showerspray.

Nurse cradles nine drains that

hang from incisions,

so they don’t pull,

husband warms the water in a nozzle,

as if I were a newborn. Sister tips my head back,

smooths suds into my scalp.

Bit by broken bit of me cleansed,

iodine stains the drain.

A ritual, this baptism,

this turn toward home.

Lucy Griffith has published two collections of poetry, We make a Tiny Herd, which won both a Wrangler Award and a Willa Award, and Wingbeat Atlas. A former hospital administrator, she lives on the Guadalupe River near a town called Comfort.

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