Water Pressure

By Sapphyre Smith

you turn your head in the shower curve your neck, just so and let the water run down your cheek like a hand cupping your face a palm thrumming with the heartbeat of summer rain.

this is the part where you forget float on steam and the promise of a train ride home to a bed that knows the shape of your body and footsteps you recognize before the knock on your bedroom door it’s warm and soft, and vapor curls lightly around you crowning your hair with misty feathers you imagine yourself there not here and let rivulets rock you into a hazy standing sleep a chug, a switch, the pressure changes – and now you’re standing in cold condensation. icy fingers dig into your scalp, shock the breath from your lungs you let the frigid radiation crystallize your blood, let it drive your home-bound lifeboat to a frozen grave because now not even water wants to hold you and there is no one here to ask if you need help to change the pressure. it pushes you away but you stay because the cold brings out the blue in your veins, the pebbles in your skin it holds even as it shoves, and you tell yourself it’s better than nothing.