My mom had a bath every night. Sounds of water sliding through copper pipes,
rushing out of faucets, were a lullaby. Childhood baths in hand-me-down water,
a tepid body, small enough to float. Sometimes water was my mother.
Learning to read, the door’s spill of steamy spirals, meant do not disturb.
Once a male babysitter walked into my bathtime,
cornered in a tub, cloaked only in water and pink skin.
Robin K. Macdonald is completing a creative non-fiction novel about a solo pilgrimage through the boreal forest of northern Manitoba. She has work published in Where There’s Fire, Ottawater and North Roots magazine.
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