Porcelain

Every time I wake up, I’m in a different bathtub. 

Usually, I wait to open my eyes until someone knocks, or rips open the curtain and screams. I could count tiles, trace cracks in milky plaster ceilings, but truth be told, bathrooms are pretty much interchangeable. Most of them are chalky, caulky white, with accents in dull burgundy or clay. The tan-and-blue ones have vases full of sand and seashells, but you can only pretend the swish of rattling, rusting pipes is the sea for so long.

Sometimes the tubs have claws that dig into cold linoleum, like levitant spirits that drift up through ceiling cracks in the absence of tenacious fingers. Sometimes they are bolted down, or moulded out of walls. I don’t think I have a favorite, but I do love the ones that spout water like orcas, and the ones with tiny caves for baby-blue soap to curl up and sleep in.

Toilets are all the same. They are nondescript and unmarked white, as if they are afraid of being picked out of a lineup. Theirs is a secret shame. I don’t look at them if I can help it. 

Sinks are gouges, pockmarks, surgical scars missing tissue, grotesque flaws in the plane of counters. They’re metal at the bottom, but that doesn’t matter. They’re still porcelain, breakable and broken. Sometimes the sound of them humming water from their noses wakes me. I lie very still and pray the washer is clean but for the hands. 

I reach for air vents, and I float right into them.