You leave the little cave so wonderfully damp for us. Twice a day, sometimes more, you fill this tiled corner with warm rain, and then you towel yourself off and step out and think you have taken the water with you. You have not. You have left it in the grout, those soft grey seams between the tiles, the ones you scrub on a Sunday with such touching seriousness.
We live there. It is warm. It is dark under the little rubber lip of the door. It is, if I may say so, the most considerate room in the whole house.
We are especially fond of the corner behind the shampoo bottles, where the light never quite reaches and the damp never quite leaves. You give us sugars in the soap film, warmth in the pipes, and, best of all, patience: you close the door when you go, sealing the steam in with us like a lid on a jar of jam.
I know you fight it. I have felt the sting of the spray-bottle, the vinegar, the bleach that scatters us for a week or two. It is a lovely game and I hold no grudge. You are simply early. You have mistaken a beginning for an ending, and cleaning for a victory, when it is only the pause before we are invited back in.
Turn the water off tonight. Listen to it drip from the showerhead in the dark, one soft bead at a time, keeping the corner exactly the way we like it. That drip is not a leak. It is a door being held open.
And we are so patient, and you are so warm, and the grout is so very soft, and the door is closing behind you now.