After Chemotherapy

by Jean Trounstine

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My sister asks, Do you take a bath every day?

That night I dream of bathing in a closet,
up to my neck in warm water, oiled, perfumed with rosemary,
the scent wafting around me like a blanket.
There are clothes. They’ll get wet.
The skirts and shirts can stay but
someone’s got to move those long dresses.

My mother bathed in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning,
her voluminous breasts bobbing on the water.
I loved to watch her sink into bubbles — the skin before it wrinkles,
a faint blush. Even a shower cap
couldn’t stop those wisps around her ears.

Prickles of hair pebbled her legs.
Freckles across her chest rising just to the nape of her neck,
her chin jutted into the air as if to say
This is my place to go,
my closet, my safe spot away from it all.

Yes, I tell my sister, I take a bath every day.
I just want to sit near my mother,
hand her soap after soap, bring her back.
If only I could have her near me now,
leaning over the tub, soap in her hand,
rubbing my arms, my back, my breast.


This poem first appeared in Jean Trounstine's book, Almost Home Free (Pecan Grove Press, 2003).

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Jean Trounstine is an author, activist and professor who is the founder of the first Shakespeare Behind Bars program in the United States. She taught at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts for more than 25 years where she was awarded honors for her teaching and work on justice issues. At Framingham Women’s Prison in Mass. for ten years she directed eight plays, and about that work, published the well-received Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison. She wrote Boy With A Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice (2016) about why children should not be sentenced to adult prisons. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, The Today Show, and internationally. Almost Home Free is her first book of poems, published by Pecan Grove Press in 2003. Her most recent book is Motherlove (2024), a book of short stories about the mothers of teens who have killed other teens was published by Concord Free Press. Find her @justicewithjean on Twitter/X and at www.jeantrounstine.com.

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