I need a bath like a pregnant lady needs pickles at 2 a.m.

I don't need one of those cozy, long baths filled with bubbles and soft music.

I need the kind of bath that is so hot, it leaves me sweating out three years of regret, and brings me to the point of an exhaustion so all-encompassing that I sleep for twelve hours straight.

I need a bath so scalding that I will relish zero below, and be left reminiscing about summers that I thought were hot before that bath.

I need a bath that will make my blood boil and my skin ruby-red-hot.

I need a bath to leave all others behind- the kind that I will tell my grandchildren about, should I survive.

I need a bath that is hell-fire and damnation to the point that I come out fresh as a kitten, repentant of all the hell-fire I have dished out.

I need a bath that will leave me begging for the Sahara- the kind that will give me a heat stroke so hefty, I will miss simple dehydration.

I need a bath.

Coming around the bend at 100 miles per hour

in an SUV,

in an attempt to break the sound barrier,

in an honest effort to feel more alive than hail in June,

we fly off the pavement, careening into air.

I watch as our bodies catch, netted between this world and the next.

Unrestrained by belts,

unbeholden to gravity,

unbending to Newton’s Law,

we break, window glass raining in a torrent.

It isn’t her screams that reverberate and fill the tin can to suffocating.

It is the pounding from a space between my ears and eyes.

It is the beating where heart meets head.

It is a rip-roaring sensation to be alive,

as she bleeds out.