Heat
Ana Davis (Griffith University)
You are having withdrawals.
Missing the daily ritual. Voluptuous ceremony:
washing through the quotidian.
Step into your Western shower—all function no luxury
and your mind remembers body longs.
Skin longing.
Open the translucent sliding door
a mottled glass membrane between
before and after
To the bathhouse.
Sulphur-scented steam: assaults.
Women of all ages, some with children beside them
naked bodies pink and glistening.
Breasts and buttocks: taut and sagging, lifted and descending, layers
of love-handles and concertinaed creases; nipples that have suckled children hang lax—justifiably tired.
Old women: spines warped into question marks
shuffling along the slippery floor, their glossy knuckles (skin so thin the cartilage shows) grip
bath chairs for safety.
All these bodies. A democracy of bodies.
The ritual begins.
Squat on low plastic stools. Lather, soap, scrub.
Bend. Vertebral shapes push against back-skin
smooth and shining. Buckets of warm water
flood over rat-slick-hair.
Bathhouse sonics: the hollow syncopation of plastic bowl-buckets
thudding onto stone shelves, slate floors again and again
clomping like the toy stilts of giants’ children
at play in the filmy echoing cave. Endless rush of spring water
piped into wide-berthed baths
steam flaring—near boiling— as it ruptures the surface
of the shimmering aquatic body.
Murmuring voices circle the wet-space cavern the rise and fall
old women at cackle. Gossip-soaked, swaying their limbs in the limpid waters.
Bundled on their head, their washcloths are wet turbans.
Bathhouse senses: an addictive rush
slip into the oblivion of heat.
An immersion, tingle-skin
an afterglow
you cannot replicate
in your home bathroom.
Here: skin feels poor
unloved
There: face flushes, cheeks plumped by 42-degree temperatures
and the iron and other minerals—
silica to soften the body’s largest organ
lending the waters a delightful stink.
Mostly though, it’s the heat.
It cleans the crevices in your mind.
Searing succour of hot water.
(But it’s gotta be hot…really hot)
Clean. Have you ever felt this clean?
In Japanese, the word
is synonymous with ‘pretty’.
You try to recreate the experience.
Brought back a long, rectangular onsen washcloth.
It hangs over your shower head.
Suds it up, gather it into your hands.
Methodical, you slough from the soles of your feet, between
your toes, and up through the body. Stretch it out—
take it by each end, drag it horizontally and diagonally across your back
just like the Japanese women at the bathhouse.
Clean. Slide into your too-shallow bath, the water drawn
hot as you can bear.
Lay back knees sticking up.
It’s not the same.
You are striving to recreate a spicy affair.
Shut your eyes, imagine your young lover
—Hot! So hot! —
while your aging, balding husband pumps above you,
his sweat drips mercury droplets onto your chest
setting cold between your breasts.
Ana Louisa Davis lives on the lands of the Bundjalung Nation, northern NSW. She is currently researching a Master of Arts at Griffith University. She has been shortlisted in various literary competitions and published in The Saltbush Review and Openbook literary magazines. She likes to write across and within the genres: poetry, playwriting, personal essays and fiction.
