The first drop hits my skin like a whisper, warm, delicate, a promise of what’s to come. Then, the downpour begins.
The water cascades over me in endless ribbons, streaming down my hair, tracing the curve of my spine, wrapping around my shoulders like a lover’s embrace. It runs in rivulets over my collarbones, over my chest, down the length of my arms, pooling in the hollows of my hands before slipping away. Cleansing. Releasing. Renewing.
Sunlight filters through the glass, turning the droplets on my skin into liquid gold. The warmth of the water and the heat of the sun merge, soaking into me, making me feel like I am dissolving, no, transforming, into something lighter, something freer.
My fingers glide over my skin, following the paths the water carves. I tilt my head back, letting the steady stream massage my scalp, my neck, washing away more than just the day’s dust, washing away tension, washing away thought, washing away everything that is not me.
At some point, I lose myself. My mind drifts, untethered, wandering through half-formed thoughts, slipping between moments from the past and fragments of imagined futures. Time becomes strange, elastic, stretching and compressing in ways that don’t quite make sense. I close my eyes, and for a while, I forget where I am.
The sound of the water becomes distant, like background noise in a dream. I don’t know how long I stand there, letting it run over me, lost in some space that exists outside of time. Minutes, maybe hours. The heat lulls me, wraps around me, makes me forget the world beyond this moment.
When I finally come back to myself, the water is still running, the steam still thick in the air. My hands rest against the cool tiles, my breath steady, my body warm and weightless.
I linger longer than I should. But why rush? This is mine, this moment, this warmth, this touch. And for now, that’s all that matters.