Patterns We Live With

I never look at it.

The shower curtain hangs there

like a fact I've stopped questioning,

same geometric squares

since I moved in—was it two years?

Three?

This morning the angle was different.

The sun hit the bathroom window early,

and there it was—

the pattern suddenly visible,

as if I'd been blind to it,

as if my eyes had learned to skip over it

the way they skip over the numbers on the microwave clock

until the time matters.

Water beads on the plastic surface.

I watched one roll down.

The squares make a kind of grid,

navy and white,

the color of something official,

something you'd see in a hospital or a waiting room.

How many showers have I taken behind this?

How many mornings?

My reflection is there too, blurred,

behind the pattern,

barely a shape,

barely myself.

I think about taking it down.

Buying something different.

But that would mean deciding what kind of person I want to be

in my own shower,

and I'm not ready for that question.

So I'll look away again.

I'll let it disappear back into the routine.

But I know now.

I've seen it.

And something's changed, and I can't change it back.