Every morning she steps in and gives me her whole weight at once, both feet, no warning, trusting the floor and the floor trusting me. I hold her there. I hold the water too, every falling thread of it, pulling each drop down from the metal head in a straight line to her shoulders, then along her arms, then off her fingertips to the drain.
I do not push it. I only offer the down, and the water takes it, the way it always takes it, gratefully.
I hold the puddle at her feet. I hold the shampoo in its slumped bottle and the bar of soap in its dish and the single earring she left on the ledge and forgot. I hold the steam, though it fights me longest, rising and rising until it cools and remembers itself and comes back down.
She stood very still today, longer than washing needs. Face up into the fall. Not moving. I checked her carefully, because sometimes when they go quiet like that they say afterward that they are carrying something heavy, that the week has been heavy, that grief sits on the chest. I have measured her chest.
There is nothing on it. There is nothing in her hands. By every measure I have, and I have only the one, she is exactly as light as she has always been.
And still she bent. Shoulders curved down toward the drain, spine folding over something I cannot find, water running off the back of her neck. So I did the only thing I know. I held her a little more surely, every gram of her, all the way down through the floor and the pipes and the dark, and I did not let go.