I came in under the door, the way I come into everything, and found the human standing inside a falling of warm water it had summoned on purpose, eyes shut, mouth open, singing to no one. The steam wanted to leave with me but the walls held it, slick glass and tile, a little room built just to keep a cloud from wandering.
I lifted the curtain and it startled, gasped, called me a draft like it was an insult, pressed itself closer to the hot stream to fill the gap I had opened. As if I meant to steal the warmth. I only wanted to see.
Here is what I carried out without asking: the smell of something green and false, coconut that never grew near any tree; a strand of steam; the tail end of the song, some sad old thing about a love long gone, sung louder here than anywhere else because the walls throw it back and no one else can hear. The human sings only where I cannot bring it to anyone.
I don't understand the wanting of this. To stand still inside a made rain, held by glass, warm and hidden and going nowhere, when the whole point of water is that it falls and finds the sea. It cried a little too, I think, though the water hid it, which is a thing water is good for, and the human knows this.
The door opened. I took the steam, the coconut, three notes of the song, and left. Down the hall, out a cracked window, gone. I set the coconut smell down over a parking lot two streets away, on a stranger who looked up, puzzled, at nothing. I was already elsewhere.
I always am.