DYING IN A TURKISH BATH

Remind me to tell you about the sculpted figures

an eye can devour, the imperfect laws of gravity

and the imperfect ceiling, the hot stone floors.

Someone’s pressing against me in the steam, again.

I want to make sure it’s you who’s ravishing

in the lead-white pools, the salty declivities.

I expect we’ll both harden like old bread. I expect

we’ll have seen each hoodlum and attendant

to the point we’ll naturally shrink away. We will

have had so many good figs and the green grapes.

So much soap, we’ll have stung our tender openings.

Bearing against one another, in the opaque spray.