The cleaning ritual

I have a room I can go to
In the house
Up the stairs
Lights on and lights off
It remains the same
Tiles
Walls
At night it will be the same
Lit by a permanent moon out by the street
And I kneel
Sit on the floor
With the water
Divine nakedness
Written on my skin
With the words
This beautiful boy’s body
I think of the beautiful boys and their beautiful songs
Living forever in the air and in the ringing in the ears
In the quietness
The isolation
I think of my mothers
Tori and Lisa
Tori so sad and defiant
So celebrating of her life
I can press my fingers against my skin
Water between the fingers
Over the eyes
I sit in the corner
Rest my head against the tile
The touch of it against my lips
My tongue as I taste it
The exhaustion of the daily narcissism
The search for the exact copy
The miles and miles of dull figures
The years written on my skin
In my blood
And the joy of exhaustion
Of celebration
Of mourning
Of surrender
Of isolation
Tears and bitterness and neutrality
They crowd in the room and then dissolve
Each becomes part of the peace
And there are no more words
I can touch myself
From my buttocks on the floor
Around the legs
The torso
The beautiful head cradled by the tiles and the water
Freshly shorn hair to resemble a normal life
Disguising these things written on my skin
I inspire greed
I feed the lust
The chaos and destruction and threat
It is adrenaline
And the water evens it
Makes it neutral and amoral
I can trace the line of the light on the glass
And here I can have the sleep that evades my bed
It is a womb
Warm liquid and selfishness and selflessness
No more self
No more life
No more anything
Everything is nothing