Finding sanctuary in showers

- inspired by Emily Dickinson: who saw holiness in most unexpected of places.

Hot showers are almost baptisms
because you have the painfully mortal choice 
to either speak to God or wash your hair.
Maybe you find Him in the bubbles 
that slide down the drain like sand in a sifter.
Hear Him in the screeching of the shower head 
as you scrub the dirt clean from your arms.
Feel Him in scalding water as the burn consumes you 
because Hell is not as fiery as the preachers say it is.
The heat caresses you like a sacred prayer 
one you would hear at funerals with few people there.
And when you shave your legs you think of Eve; 
if even she needed to have smooth skin to be loved.

You wonder if He is listening in on all of your thoughts—
the one’s where you question your faith; 
the one’s where you desire more than Him; 
the one’s in which your brio may be vanity; 
the one’s in which you cry for Him to cosset you again, 
groveling to be let into heaven purely out of pity—
and thinking about how many Hail Mary’s to bestow.
This lonesome hot shower is your baptism.
You cannot afford to face God in a church steeple, 
so you build your own place of worship 
amongst the bottles of soap and dull razor blades. 
Completing this sanctified ritual at least once a day; 
sin seems to follow you like a hungry stray cat.
You baptize yourself in the conviction that you are clean.
Possibly, hopefully, clean enough for Him.