On your knees

On your knees on cold wet tile, your eyes and the dry empty cavities of your head drag upward slowly through the steam. They tingle benevolently and your shoulders melt into your neck growing soft and languid. Your face threatens to droop away. You tilt your head, turning back around your left shoulder and your eyes slide down to the right. You joints are warm and loose. They do not react. Your dresses are warm and wet, each blanketing you in viscous grog. The dress against your skin gathers around your joints where you crouch and sag with thick wet folds. The next approximates and smooths over the disruptions of the last, until the outer dress is a smooth rind over a heap of useless limbs, the whole mess growing heavier as it is warmed by steam. You are kneeling. Across your thighs the dress spreads out across the floor blending into it. Next to the door, which is ajar, you pick up two white canvas shoes. Each ponderous move pulls you deeper into the sagging landscape of your dresses. You slump your face out the door, into cold dry air and liquid light.