Cold Water in Iraq

Lindsey Waterman

four female soldiers
naked in the shower,
giggling like mad women
first in line at four am
to get the last of nighttime’s
tepid water
at six am the sun comes to
arrest life in the desert
and by nine am it’s ninety five and rising;
by dusk the shower trailer is inert,
by that time no one can go in
the water too hot
for human skin
but on this morning we’d gotten a box,
an anonymous package, sent by a church
with intoxicating soaps and lotions,
Victoria’s Secret and Bath &
Body Works;
and delighted, ignoring the camp alarm,
and oblivious to the pounding mortar rounds
obliterating a nearby road, we marveled
at each other with our hair down,
clean for once, and I shaved
for the first time in
seven months
water
colder than my body, shocking
a fresh, visceral feel,
splashing down my neck and back
and forcing me to exhale,
I thought, if a bomb hits us,
let it come, I felt real
at our feet, we watched the streams
of sweat and dirt and baby wipe baths,
twelve months and five days worth of our lives’ dead skin
sloughed off our exhausted sinew
disappearing down the drain
I have never enjoyed another cold rinse
and I haven’t spoken of this since,
but I can still smell Victoria’s Secret
from across a lecture hall
and I feel cold water
on a dry desert dawn.