ghost ships.

You'd asked me to sit with you while you soaked in the bath,
and I had said yes, because things like that were little things
that friends could do for one another.
The steam had soaked into my throat like a lozenge,
and I mused that my skin was maybe warming,
my pores maybe opening to receive your happiness.
You'd told me, sitting in that bath,
that you were grateful that my eyes didn't look at you
the way other people's eyes looked at you.
You were grateful that you could trust me that way,
that I wouldn't abuse you,
just because of who I was.
I didn't need to say anything else because
that's when you told me
that you sometimes thought of dropping
your mother's hair dryer into the water with you.

I didn't need to ask why.
Like the steam to my lungs, I was the engine of your purge.
I was the tool you could use to free yourself
from the ever-elusive something that had taken a hold of you.
I was your salvation, sitting in your bathroom,
watching your naked form in the water as you shook
and told me about how much you feared,
how you feared everything from the failures of your imminent future
to the failures of your distant past,
from the way their eyes looked at you,
a morsel of meat, a fruit ripe for the picking,
to the way their eyes avoided you,
a raisin, a carcass on the side of the road.
You weren't afraid to be alone but you didn't want to be lonely.

I will always remember the way that you shook,
sitting in that tub that was thankfully void of your mother's hairdryer,
as you ran your fingers through your soaking hair
and told me that sometimes you didn't want yourself anymore
because you were old hat, somebody else's toy,
abandoned, unwanted, because nobody would pick you up
at the garage sale even if they lowered your price
a ludicrous amount.
You told me that you didn't make love to yourself anymore,
that your hands were broken vessels incapable of caring for yourself,
because nobody else's hands would overcome that prejudice,
so why should you?

You had asked me, eyes dripping like the faucet,
if you were worth loving.

I told you what I thought.
I told you how beautiful you were.
I told you how winters were made spring by the sight of your smile,
and how your hands were not broken vessels but ghost ships
sailing through the neverending nights,
bringing you whatever peace you could find in your poetry,
in your art, in the lyrics you wrote and the strings you plucked,
the sculptures you crafted, the words you typed.
I told you how I admired every inch of you,
from the corners of your mind stretched thin to cover your bases
to the healthy happy core of you;
No matter how rotten an apple you thought you were,
I knew that you could plant yourself any day,
and the tree of you would be as beautiful
as you appeared to me now.

I told you how I knew you could survive the rains,
the monsoons, the storms that people gave you,
with a few branches missing but the body still there.
And I told you that when the end was near,
and your life had been lived in full,
how the rings that would lead to your center
would dot evenly the years through which I loved you.
You could count each one as a victory etched deep within you.

Yes, you said, your eyes still full of tears,
but I can't be loved.

No, I said, my heart full of steam,
It's impossible not to see you as you are,
right this second,
and to deny the very thought of loving you.
Just because hands have touched you
where you think the line of your value lies,
and brushed away the chalk line separating
yourself from their concepts,
does not mean that, somehow,
you have been diminished,
because you are worth so much more than their satisfaction.

And I am thankful, I am thankful every day I exist
that you have not taken your solace,
that you have not come into this room full of steam and water,
and done yourself in with a hairdryer,
because every day,
I look at you and I see your face,
your body, your eyes, your hair,
and every day,
I love you more and more.

I had run out of steam.
My heart had fallen into a deep slumber,
and my pores, still open,
were expelling the last of it.
You were still shaking in the tub,
but there was something in your eyes,
and it gave me, perhaps,
a little bit of hope.
And, after a bit of silence,
you had asked me to wash your hair,
and I had said yes, because things like that were little things 
that friends could do for one another.