A good familiar basic thing.

Sometimes, when I take a shower in the dim bathroom in my dorm hall I can imagine that I'm at home.
When there is shampoo in my hair, and I close my eyes and it's warm and sudsy and I can't see anything. I can only feel soap and water. I can smell shampoo lather.
It's a good familiar basic thing.
To clean yourself in your home, where you are safe and nearby there is a kitchen with leftovers in the fridge. A family sitting in their own places- separate but sharing themselves all the same. Because they are family.

And then I hear another stranger girl's flip flops slap against the tile, the bang of a stall door, the flush of a toleit, the clank of some dark pipe in the walls. The sudden burning water sears my back and I jump out of the water and open my eyes.
There is no family. No white porcelin bathtub with shelves for bars of soap and bottles. There is a dirty gray floor, a drab gray wall with hair in the drain that doesn't belong to me. And I wash the rest of my lonely self quickly.