These few days...

She steeps in epsom salts because they are desiccating and chalky, and she waits to see how much the sieve of her skin can swallow up the groundwater. When she gets out, her head in the evaporating steam attached to her overdried body is purified like some atmospheric dust from space. Here is the way she dresses for no one, evacuated inside her home: running shoes and a towel. Running shoes without socks accompany the mid-morning ritual of crouching on a barstool before a newspaper with their moulded high arches tucked beneath her dripping wet hair. Stages of her morning proceed with this stratagem of nimble footwork and towel-dropping until she changes for the benefit of the sun's saleman approach through the shades.