Droplets

I rise from the tub weary. Clean and weary of the loop-loop of thoughts that snowball endlessly down a hill, obliterating everything else. My mind is no longer my own and rolls at a crazy speed, toward certain splintering, crashing wall. I choose a jar of cocoa butter encased in an expensive brown disc. I choose cocoa butter because of the keen, nearly physical sensation of memory it stuns me with. It is what I wore back then. Pearlescent cocoa butter in a vat-sized plastic drugstore jar. Back when I rose from the tub, excited and barely taking time to towel off before moving into the open room of all possibility. What would I do that day? I didn’t know, but somewhere along the way something delicious would happen – it could be the whisper of wind lifting my hair, the shiver of a boy brushing past in the hallway, or even a sudden wicked thought.

That was the world then.

It’s no wonder I’m hiding within, breathing bubbles beneath the surface of nostalgia right now.