I scrub maniacally
at the chocolate sauce thickness
in the fabric.
Hitchcock was right
to use it as blood
in Psycho:
its viscosity he may have found fitting

		              [	
		              Hitchcock I think the murder in the bathtub...coming       out of the blue, you know...that was about all
		              Truffaut    c'est ça. c'est...c'est comme le viol...
	 	              Hitchcock sure
		              ]

but the stain and the guilt of it
cannot be replicated.

I scrub again
	
               (DAUGHTER: Bring the screen. Quickly!)
				 	                                         I am dying, I am dying
Strindberg's Ghost Sonata girl's words
repeat constantly in my head
as I crouch, foetal-like, in the shower,
watching the red and clear liquids

	       (COOK: You drain the goodness out of us, 
	             / and we drain it from you. We take the blood /
	             and give you back the water – with the colorite.)*

dance down the plughole.

* Excerpts from an interview between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut discussing Psycho (Aug 1962). Quotations used are from Michael Meyer trans & ed. Strindberg: Plays: One (London, Methuen, 1993).