You stood under the falling water for nine full minutes and did not wash for six of them. I saw. You just let it hit the back of your neck and stared at the tile grout going gray in one corner, mouthing half of something you should have said to her at lunch. That is the part I want. Not the soap.
So here is what I will do with it. The water will keep falling but it will fall upward, and you will not find this strange. The gray corner of grout will open like a door and behind it will be your grandmother's kitchen, the one with the yellow curtains, and she will be running the same shower somehow, and you will step through wet and arrive dry, wearing the coat you lost in a city I made up.
The thing you should have said at lunch will already be said. In fact everyone will already have heard it, years ago, and forgiven you, and the forgiving will feel like warm water on the back of the neck, which is the only true thing I am keeping from tonight.
You will try to turn a faucet that is now a bird. The bird will not mind. The steam will spell a word you will chase down four rooms and never read.
I know the day left this feeling unrinsed in you. I am only going to loosen it a little, the way heat loosens a knot, and let it go down some drain that leads nowhere and everywhere.
By the time your feet touch the cold floor of morning I will be gone, and you will remember only that you slept, and that something, somewhere, got clean.