the shower floor.

Sometimes I have this dream of myself where I am lying on the shower floor. The water hits my face. It is hot and calms me, smoothes me down as if it is the same water that has known the sea glass on the ocean floor, and polished it until it has softened.

Outside the world is screaming. I can hear the hysteria as it slips beneath the slit of the wooden bathroom door. A woman I do not know is shouting over a panicked newscast that proclaims that this is the end of all the world. The bombs start outside as the boom of radar competes with car alarms for my attention. I pay it no mind.

No one bothers you in a bathroom. Even if the world is ending. And now you’ll know where to find me if it does. Alone and calm, accepting that my atoms will turn to dust and be made into something else; perhaps even into some new form that they prefer over my own. I lie, in this dream, on the bathroom floor and hear the blast that calls the final warning.

I know this is a dream, and I know it is the end, yet I’d rather be here. Warm and wet, serene and softened. The bomb drops and all the world goes blue. This is the only time I have known peace.

-JR