You In Lieu

My skin is crawling.
I can feel the patches on my body
Where your lips moved.
Cold and stale.
I can taste you in my mouth,
Smell you on my breath.
I turn on the hot tap.

I feel dirty.
I sit down on the plastic edge of the bath.
Naked as the sky
Staring at the orange wall,
Wishing it were the sun.
Conscience is a very powerful thing. 

My mind starts to think back,
To relive what has already happened.
I could feel 'you'
But I was thinking of 'him'.
He lives in me.
He won't leave me.

I can remember you,
Your skin
A foreign brown,
A contrast to his startling white.
You're fingers bulky and strong.
His delicate and small. 

Your eyes as ice blue 
As the insides,
Of my dormant chest.
Where there is no more green.
Where is the spring?
The fire finished burning and took the trees with it.

I climb into the bath.
Steam rises into my tired face
Creating a ribbon of moisture on my brow.
The water is too hot
It burns my skin.
Like a Jew being sterilised in Auschwitz: it is procedure. 

I hold the sides 
And lower myself down.
My palms squeak as they struggle to grip wet plastic.
Back hits the water and sends a shock down my frozen spine.
My body down to my bones is sizzling.
Its my relief.

I look at the gaping hole in the middle of the ceiling.
I can empathise. 
Sickly.
I take a deep breath 
And submerge my head and thoughts.
I settle, then listen to my perfectly audible heartbeat - trying to escape my rib cage. 

I think of you.
I think of him.
I open my eyes to scorching consequences. 
He won't let me be. 
And I doubt, in all truth
That he ever, ever will.