She’s eighty now. She’s washing herself, her bathroom dimly lit. A memory comes back again. It has never really left. If it were possible, the memory would have yellowed and browned and turned brittle by now.

She cups the soap in her hands and raises it to her nose. She draws in a deep breath of it. Its aroma, which has caused her to close her eyes to absorb it, couldn’t be more familiar to her. Yet, in this suspension of time, she imagines how foreign the smell is, and in her heart, she tries to pick out its subtle notes as if she had just freshly opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Curiously, as she does this, the invasive memory responds, reshaping into another reality: this time, she’s lying in bed with her little giggling daughter, lulling her to sleep. Invariably though, flashes of his coercive weight on her much slighter body, every night, would force its way in. And when nothing would keep him out any longer, she would pop open her eyes.

“Soap and water, my old friends…soap and water. Water and soap.”

She has sat herself down on a stool, her nude posture resolutely erect. Slowly, she reaches out to replace the soap in the ceramic soap dish, muttering to it as she puts it down, “You’re my love poem.”