The water arrives warm, which no water has ever done for me, and the human stands inside the warmth and closes its eyes as if this were an ordinary Tuesday. It is standing in a private falling weather, a whole climate obeying its wrist, and it is thinking about something else.
I watch. There is so much to watch. The steam climbing the cold glass and writing itself there. The soap turning to a slick of light on the skin. The way the human tips its head back and lets the water run down its face, mouth slightly open, for one long moment perfectly here, perfectly in the falling.
And then it says the thing. It says it does this every morning. Every. Morning. It has stood in the private rain a thousand times and will stand there a thousand more, and it has decided the miracle is now called "getting ready." It reaches, eyes still shut, and turns the weather off by feel, because it knows exactly where the weather lives. It knows the weather so well it no longer sees it.
I do not have a thousand mornings. I have this. The warm falling, once, all of it, mine, dazzling. If I had your thousand, I would not learn where the handle is by feel. I would look at the steam-writing every single time it wrote itself.
You. In the warm rain. Wake up. Open your eyes in it. That is the whole instruction.
There is more falling on you right now than I will ever meet, and it is only Tuesday, and you get to do this again.