The Sink

This is an oldie but goldie. One of the first poems I ever read in front of an audience. And the poem that influenced the notorious relationship I developed with the Theater Arts Department at Wayland Baptist University. Enjoy!

I heard water running
in the sink
after we fucked.
(A lovely dance of
unmitigated fornication.)
Not just a trickle,
(you know, The sound of impish laughter on
the lips of Puck)
but a roar..
I listened to the sound
as intently as possible (for I was one recovering
from ecstasy and that requires cigarettes and strong drink).
and it became deafening.

Unable to withstand the hellish cacophony of bleak white any longer,
I got up and went into the bathroom (that place of mystic wonders, sights and sounds. That place that creeps up to the very edge of my dreams when it thinks I’m not looking)
to see what extraordinary miracle she was performing.
Reality stepped into~ I stepped into~ the doorway
and found
her crying.
{That most sacred of acts that fertilizes the wastelands of broken hearts}

Bottles of pills littered the floor.
The contents either strewn carelessly
across tear soaked tile
[—maybe it wasn’t tears. Maybe it was water that saturated the situation beyond repair.]
or being shoved thankfully into her mouth.

She was praying to God,
-–that notorious hipster who desperately needs a ride to El Paso (he has a Mexican mother winking lustfully at him from across boundless riverbeds)–
Persuading her divine influence, between huge gulps of water,
to grant forgiveness,
to offer salvation.

And I…I couldn’t move.
Rooted in place, I watched her kill herself

~mesmerized~ (once again I was a child enthralled by curiously fascinating periods of bright light and dazzling color)
By the morbidity of the situation (really was artful. A real finesse in the way she went about it).

And despite the torrent of erotic dysfunction trying frantically to organize itself into an experience (or secretly, a memory), a single thought kept playing in my numb mind:

“Was I really that bad?”

Jason DeGray—2004