Liminal Linoleum

I miss that feeling of unlimited time when I
was a child and I would sit for as long as I
needed on the bathroom floor after my
shower, staring into space as I
drip-dried. My
skin was dirtier then but softer too, and there were no raised scars or mounds of broken flesh for the water droplets to stutter over as they
passed. That slight tingling itch as they
trailed over unmarred flesh, uninterrupted. I
tried to drip-dry yesterday, just a bit, to unlock those pockets of endless time. The droplets plummeted toward the ground at breakneck speed, hurling themselves
off the red mark cliffs. I
dragged a cotton towel over wet body and flaky epidermis shed off— the way it
always does from the lack of moisture— and the music that haunted the shower kept pouring out from my
phone, making it impossible to lose myself
in the bare apartment walls. I
couldn't even sit on the floor, no bathmat or carelessness to make the wet linoleum comfortable. Nowhere to be comfortable. Clean skin. Mounds of broken flesh. Interrupted droplets. Clogged pores from towel lint. When I
am bone dry, I
pick scabs and forget the droplets.