Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Soap

When it is time to clean up,

I am a lovely little cricket.

Rub my glossy legs until I sing.

Soaps I’ve used in the past year:

tangerine, oatmeal, mango,

milk, papaya, chocolate. I am

a sucker for stores selling

only soap. Pastel cakes and cakes

piled on each paper-lined shelf.

Sometimes I get to slice

my own soap from a giant loaf.

For months you ask me to shower

with you. I refuse and refuse

and refuse. Until the day

you walk in my door

smelling like salt and wind.

You pour a handful of sea glass

down my shirt. I chirp cold syllables

until the tub is so full of steam.

I could lose you just to find you.

But there is the panic of closing

my hand around nothing but bubbles.

So I must grab and grab and grab you.

Make me reek like an elodea blossom

crushed under my chin. There is no tile,

no coppery stink of metal. Instead

of saying I love you, say I lather you. Say it.

Say it all day long. Sing it so it sticks

under the first fold of my ear,

the only place you didn’t rub.