Sauna by Sandra Gilbert

Alone in the sauna, nearsighted, heating up after a long cold swim alone, I don’t really notice her when she comes in-- a twist of white in the half light, then a female blur spread flat on the upper bench. I sit crosslegged, stare at nothing, breathe, sweat, meditate. And then her voice: What’s wrong? Is something wrong? Or is it just the heat? I hadn’t thought I looked like that: drenched, exhausted, drippy as Phaedra on the scorching boards. Naked I swam away from you, back to my life through a tank of snow. But now I’m happy, tingly, in great shape. Whose are these sighs? Why does my body weep? From “Blood Pressure” (W. W. Norton: $15.95; 114 pp.). Gilbert is a feminist critic and, with Susan Gubar, co-editor of “The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women” and (also with Susan Gubar) of both “The Madwoman in the Attic” and “No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century.” Sandra Gilbert, 1988. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton.