Sputter

By Ahana Ganguly

For a moment, the pillar of spit connects me to the dirtiest part of the sink. Imagine this as load-bearing: that when it collapses — because it will collapse; it is spit, after all — the whole structure will come crashing down.

The drain and I make eye contact. In unison, we ask: is the lower lip the roof, then? What’s the house, with this curved floor? 

When it collapses, my face will be rubbled with the sink.

The drain clutches its filth tight. New toothbrush tucked away in its mug, I make plans to take an old one to task here. I look and keep looking. What looks back: clustered rot on a very small scale. Spit from yesterday and before, mouth debris, food or hair softening as it decomposes, whatever feculence has been on my hands from the outside or from myself, and discarded skin darken together as they stay touching. Soap and toothpaste, too. They become scum when you’re not scrubbing at other things with them. They are snug in their trench, nourished by the water I sweep at them. I mean to dislodge but they bask and bask. 

I become hyperaware: the toilet, this sink filth, is too close to my bed. Just a door that lets me pretend the dirty is distant from the clean. The bathroom is a failing technology, refusing: despite itself, to conceal what it tries-claims to conceal. We consume the signs of cleanliness, whether or not they are indicators of actual cleanliness or health. Gorge on them in a space specifically corralled off for urination and defecation: 

Tidiness obscures dirt, which is evidence of an object not detached from time: there have been people touching this. Other grasps, then fingers, then their heat and their fingerprints. This is the problem: matter that refuses to dis-appear and therefore facilitates intimate touch, even across delay, even across disavowal.

My spit is the structural integrity here. A gauge: how far can it get from my mouth until it’s gross: where is the inside, where is the outside. For now it stands pillared between us, so the three of us are stuck here in this moment of non-collapse. The spit is still an extension of my inside, and it touches the sink, which touches  its dirt, and the floor with its discarded hair, and the whole of the bathroom. I stay standing, tongue to spit to sink, newly a creature with a toilet in my mouth.