i'm up to my ears in bathwater and all i hear is the years-old echo of that old woman in that movie: flores, flores para los muertos. i dried the petals of those doomed roses, i don't know why, and decided to toss a handful into the bath. the looked like butterflies, sitting on the mountains of bubbles, like a martha stewart valentine's day.

when their rose-ness is rinsed away by the hot water, they are the color of skin, zombie scales floating in my bath. their smell comes back, just beneath the bergamot bubble bath, that rotting corpse abandoned murder house bruised siren smell.

i pull out my hand and one has smoothed itself against the heel. it even feels like skin, hairless, elasticity worn out, but skin nonetheless. once i told a lover he had skin like water, but what i meant to say and didn't know was that he had skin like a wet rose petal.

i pull out the plug and they circle, used and violated, down the drain, back to their bodies, back to their graves.