Then she danced the doorway's bright light across us, and she leaned over me. I turned her face against my shoulder, and lifted her rich braid; I folded her ear down, and looked.
Why yes, in the down of her neck was the soft welt I'd given her.
'You're not unmarked yourself,' I said, and I pecked her on the spot.
'You're not grabbing,' she said, 'are you?' And I let my hands lie on the tub floor; I pecked her twice more on the ear. And she touched my chest with her hand, just with the points of her fingers; she wouldn't let her palm lie flush. She kept her face turned against my shoulder; she touched me as stilly as she could. Her weight wasn't on me. She was like a long, lightly stunned fish - made to lie coolly atwitch, but airy in the hand.
'I'm going now,' she said.
'Why do I have to stay in the bathtub?'
'I guess you don't.'
'Where's Siggy?' I said.
'Getting you flowers.'
'Getting me flowers?'
'Yes,' said Gallen. 'He's got a bowl of water, and he's going to fill it full of forsythia petals.'
Then a wood-creak shuddered the walls and crept under the tub, and my Gallen flicked as noiselessly across the room as her shadow; the rectangle of bright doorway drew round its sides on itself, and my light disappeared like a water drop in a sponge.
Out of the Bathtub, Life Goes On
Notorious Graff,
Lord of the Tub
Where nymphets come to water.
Grabby Graff,
Sly in the Tub,
Leads virgins to their slaughter.
Bottomless Graff,
Fiend of the Tub,
Wooer of beasts and nymphets.
Appalling Graff,
Stealthy in Tub,
Makes virgins into strumpets.
Oh, Graff!
Rotten Graff!
For your ass a briar staff, To teach you to be kinder.
SO WRITES SIEGFRIED JAVOTNIK, poet of the humdrum and shellshocked ear - bearer of forsythia petals afloat in a borrowed bowl.
No one ever gave me a poem before, so I said, 'I think you cheat on your rhymes.'