When the hot water hits my back, muscles throughout my body relax. I sag until only my skeleton holds me up, and I enjoy the pressure on my neck, the heat pooling there and flowing down my body. I need to clean, but first things first. I loll my head back, rolling my hair under the stream of water until it is a mat of glowing wet heat warming my head. Then my face goes under the showerhead. It often doesn’t wash the sleep away, but the water takes something of the night away with it, leaving me a new face for the day.

I could stand here forever, but I can’t. Soap in the loofah, scrub the body, arms, legs, feet. Rinse it out, hang it up. Rinse off. Shampoo the hair, the armpit hair, the genital hair. Rinse them out. Bar soap on the face, in the armpits to make sure I get rid of the smell of yesterday. Rinse them all.

That leaves me nothing to do but enjoy the hot, damp pressure streaming onto my neck, until I convince myself I need to be doing something better with my time.

God, I hope that takes forever.