Dear Herzegovinian Rubber Ducky

Dear Herzegovinian rubber ducky,

In the aquatic abyssma of our restroom,

I turn you over in my hand;

under scope of a scrutiny belonging to those beginning Persian physicians,

ibn factory mass plastic.

From babbles to full conversations,

you have witnessed this never-ending puberty.

Among spongy loofahs

and linolenic soaps,

you are a solid object.

Your presence is masculine but you have the features of hyper orthodox femme,

buoyant beaks that wouldn’t dream of talking for the respect that

you are one of the only beings on earth who understand

3 year old omnipresence.

Molded wings resistant to chemical and inertia.

Sesame black eyes that make elementary alphabet of the most complicated problems.

How I admire your encompassing paraffin aura.

You, whose complexion is so beta that it breaks the regular lens of vision into the higher plane,

this yolk of an A-grade egg,

whose stock went up when Hamptonian Ina Garten abolished the use of its yeoman white counterpart,

because we like seeing the gastronomic blood specks of sacrificed chicks,

or sometimes chick twins..

Or perhaps the robes of a Mahayana Buddhist,

devout despite the deviances of tropical isles..

Or fries,

caution tape,

blondes,

emojis,

the smiles of most people..

Or the file folder of a DA,

set to execute a man,

you are amaranth..ine¹.

I have trusted you in my basest of times.

I recall the time I won you,

that unbelievable church carnival night twenty one years ago.

Chromatic lights spun around me

and cotton candy dusted the autumn air.

The trial was teacups,

a game of statistics and skill.

Each of my family took their shot.

Failures.

I was left with the last red ticket.

I didn’t understand, think, or try, but plop!

Right in one of the hundred bobbing cups!

I was awarded with the toy inside - you,

my first real prize.

Your hasbro jinx:

šapni mi svoje tajne

(whisper to me your secrets)

reci mi hrabro

(tell me with courage)

i nema srama

(and have no shame.)

90s r&b also works.

Then get down to business,

the real dip.

When the moon is right,

I run a bubble bath.

I apologize every time I drop in a French rose bomb,

causing your own Dunkirk;

how you with PTSD,

relax after the interminable moment when the botanicals simmer into a thin nonconcealant foam.

I pick you up and see that your bottom reads,

MADE IN HERZEGOVINA - a patent that has made me feel scared,

but in an excited way, whenever you accompanied my washes as a child.

You have been a real paramedic.

Thank you for protecting me against plumbing sharks,

shower curtain ghosts,

and Norman Bates.

You are as comforting as Tylenol,

instant coffee,

and infidelity.

The eurythmics of your love is crisp and clear -

you are the friend who stays after a long summer,

the diplomat who hates debate,

the southern cousin across the lake.

And unlike humans or other objects (same thing), you are

selfless, courteous, amiable, and respectful,

just to list some of your virtue - a flag you float firmly for.

Today I play with you,

confessing my conscience.

You and I ford ourselves halfway in the water,

eyes screening the film of its surface,

rendering the acoustics of the buzzing light

and the subterranean porcelain tub at the same time.

We appreciate the green bathwater, summoning tides,

and formulating the thought that if Michelangelo was commissioned to leave a chapel undersea like the one he build for the Medicis

in case of an apocalyptic tsunami,

our bodies would be flung and cast into two of its statues,

saving our breath like cosmonauts.

You think I would be Dawn, and

I think you would be Night (because I always miss the sunset running these sessions too long),

or maybe the baby in Madonna and Child.

Yes, us two, out of all on Earth

(because we’re special.)

I sit up and squeeeze the water out of your body

messing with your brain fluids right before you solve the enemy’s code,

Davinci.

The scent of shampoo thins our mind and shortens our eupnea,

mine biotic,

yours condomine,

and so we enter a precipitate hour.

You sail away to be closer to the squidding faucet and indecisive drain stopper,

physical distance parlaying emotional,

I collapse my hand over the rim.

You are my resident listener.

A therapist.

An MD.

A missionary fantasy enters my right ear like the fuchsia plume of John Tenniel²,

an inversion of his partner’s vantage:

an older gentleman

contemplates my nose for a kiss,

then in response via my left ear,

the thimble memory of Dua Lipa’s singing,

“And if you’re under him…”

You tell me that I really don’t want anything.

I give you another squeeze.

I commence to talk about relevant irrelevancies,

the headline being that most people don’t purchase hospitality cards these days because the companies ran out of nice words after 2022.

I tell you this because I wish to convey what you mean to me,

and I can’t,

then suddenly I realized the purpose of inkwell letterheads.

Squeeze.

H

ey, I have also learned, as you are a master of this, that you control your stretch of time.

An hour can be as fast, or as long, as a person wishes,

dependent on his orientation.

Squeeze.

Otherwise, it is realizations I hate the most.

Squeeze.

You tell me that this is a marvelous thing.

I update you on my major.

I find my former solace, the art of film, a banality cursed by its own arrogance. Affluence of the day is to present extremely exclusive self-tragedy, and it is worn on the actors not with vulnerability, but with ego.

Squeeze.

The composition is so deafening that I am inclined to cover the ears of sound-sensitive children. The writing feels like consuming alcohol, eating at my brain cells.

Squeeze.

I cannot scrunch my spine and absorb the UV B any more, sacrificing a tele-advisory hour for those natural of day and night. Squeeze.

No, that’s not how I’ll move in my life.

I feel like I’m about to catch a subway, and I can see myself waiting for the fleet, putting out my hand in a hitchhiker’s sign.

I must make wise decisions.

You tell me that I can count my qualms on my hands,

and that I have an easy answer for each of them so long as I stretch out each “piece of paper” not expecting a fortune,

but an ever-thirsty question.

I plunge you to the bottom,

feeling your tonnage increase,

and with each concern,

I give you a squeeze,

splashing your wisdom at my face.

I tell you about my limbo,

and ask how I can jump out of this for the imprisoning paradox of forcing passion by sought distractions.

You say I’m prettiest when I look out at an isosceles angle. That the summer is here and the heat will inspire either profane productivity or deposit slumber. That the choice is in my limbs, like the skeletal remains of the Jurassic in the Smithsonian.

Then come my lesbian nightmares,

including the more soothing ones cameoing

the dark haired dove, Sam Rollinson, telling me to trust the dark haired people

after some holocom Saturday night party (within the dream)

because they’re cuddlier and cooler.

In real life, I explained to my bestie that I accept lesbians as friends because her affection for me is deprived, that it’s too in the face, in need of refinement.

And she thinks I’m too physical because I’m tropicated,

and that one’s bed isn’t just a free for all for poor family and friends,

because there’s a subliminal sexism beneath my somewhat awkward platonic herald.

And you tell me that everyone has their own oedipal.

Correction, I of course meant to say “sexuality” there but you know, here you start nodding with me and we mutter together, because that term refers to the capacity of one’s feelings whereas I said “sexism” which basically means racism, and the former word is proper, but then I sound like a psychologist and we agreed that I’d be putting that off to go into nursing. Go into nursing. Yeah.

I tell you about the lotto.

You say 0 5 8 73 24 22 98 4.

I pinch my nose and go underwater,

and here I can hear your voice,

massive, copywrit of nonetheless Verdi or Wagner,

from which a tarot more like a master deck of poker cards leases

advice to travel.

I’m young and the exploit is affordable.

A lot of people travel for the airbnb experience these days.

Central Europe is opening up.

Maybe one day I will fulfill the goal of going to Astrakhan.

The job title I was looking for when I was seven was creative director,

and if I hadn’t switched to showers then you would have told me.

A lot of countries have beautiful, minimalist cultures that a budding dir. can appreciate.

I'll tell you that I’ve read through three nineteenth century essay books, including one with Spinoza’s Worm.

You tell me that I’ve already met enough life-changing seniors, save one or two.

I tell you that I am looking for a new job, that it’s likely the grocery mart I grew up going to, and it feels like I’ve moved back eighteen spaces in Monopoly and up one.

You tell me that I will achieve central air-conditioning one day, youngest child of family. Go, enjoy their mango tajín candies.

I tell you that I won’t be moving into relationships with deities, I have a habit of looking for thematic finality.

You tell me that whatever it is, each current unwell will be met with exponential warm welcomes in the future.

Wow, what a mouthful, definitely not Kraft cheese.

Oh dear rubber duckie,

I just don’t know it nowadays.

Why are men so depressed?

Women so mean?

Are the children okay?

You spit bubbles at me,

emerging from the ebullition like a coy murderer,

reassuring that nothing has changed.

I don’t leave immediately once I take the plug out.

I sit staring, slumped, tossing bardot hair side to side.

The tepid water drains, returning you to the white basin of your world.

I pick you up.

Squishing you, your plastic coos at me with vacancy.

You are gladly, but in no way, defeat.

The same for I, thanks.

I dry off, looking at my Herzegovinian rubber duck with a height deserving of vertigo, I don’t know what it is with bathtubs.

Due to my messy habits the entire scene looks like a pinball machine, but with cosmetics.

You bleak beside the pedicure bowl and detergent soap bar.

I smile like Jerry Maguire.

This is your way of saying,

sayonara.

I love you rubber ducky.

Sincerely,

Your owner.

FOOTNOTES:

¹ amaranth (adj): yellow; amaranthine (adj): will not die.

² John Tenniel was the illustrator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll