It took me 3 hours to get out of the shower today. The barrage
from above and the drain guzzling from below were enough. The warmth
encompassed and the slightly too-chlorined Nashville water beaded and broke
into streams mirroring veins that pulsed beneath my skin.
The midday sun froze over the scene. A student found dead in
their car on the 5th floor parking garage next to the basketball
stadium. The same garage I climbed to the top of to watch the sun melt into
hills. But today was different. Today it stopped in its tracts like in Joshua
but the rays this time didn’t showcase victory but instead a defeat. My space
of glory was someone else’s place of knee-buckling sorrow.
A hospital suite of secrets, of screws and bolts and affairs and
moving-ons. The keeping out was what got me. Thursday fell once more to 5 years
of hiding and I wasn’t let in again despite my knocking.
These spaces were everything.
They were too much.
But this water hitting and hitting. The consistency of
streaming, not screaming for life or love. It’s realer to me today. This is the
only space I want to feel today.
