Shower

In other worlds, we bathed in glass instead of water. Thousands of small grains cascade as I stand bare in the shower, eroding. Our ancestors never found cool, aqueous respite, only beams that scorched the vast, barren sea of gold they wandered. Their mouths, always parched, never welcoming foreign waterborne contaminants. Still, they were contaminated all the same by those that burrowed into the flesh. In any account of humanity, we are flesh. To be wrung, to be infected, by what cleanses and sustains. And yet, we bathe in dust or dew. We consume. We reach still for what purifies, even if it wounds.