From my window.
I pull at the long, rough strings to my bathroom blinds, the dingy wheel reluctant, begrudgingly doing its part to draw the yellowing plastic strips upwards.
An epsom salt and bubble bath is my sanctuary. The bathroom is in the quietest part of the house. Opening the blinds turns my anti-sensory float into an open air Roman bath. Clouds, puffy and inviting, or ominous and warning show up in my window. The leaves from an overgrown tree lean in and out of the frame. There’s a single red leaf in amongst the green. It causes my mind to wander, imagining snow falling past my window, ice making beautiful patterns along the edge.
My window is a menu, a list of options for my mind. I move through those clouds, bubbles around me intensifying the experience. The warm water cracks my heart open while the open sky encourages me to choose my adventure.
I don’t mind that the window is dirty or that the bathtub would benefit from a scrub.
My tea has long grown cold in its mug on the edge of the tub but my mind transforms it into an Arnold Palmer on a blue sky day, sitting on some country porch, snapping peas in a rocking chair next to my mom, bloodhounds in piles around my feet snoring the afternoon away.
