20/12/2023 Wednesday Matins

Prologue
Huh. They changed the faucet.

Chapter 1
And I don't even notice until the water hits my hand. They say you can't really feel the actual sensation of 'wet', just changes in temperature and texture on the surface of your skin. So it isn't wetness per se, but a change of temperature and texture, that hits the surface of my skin in a watery jet, far smoother than how I remember it; fewer suspended air bubbles; a more laminar flow. And oh, the air is thick with the deep resonant hum of water coursing through pipes, far more pleasant than the static-like hiss I always associated with this particular sink, and

Chapter 2
now on second inspection, this is certainly not the same faucet I remember, the shape is more or less the same, but the proportions are off, the handle is more slender, the metal surface, once worn and stained by the hardness of our tap water, would not have reverted of its own accord to a state so glossy and fresh. Half-formed witticisms about the Ship of Theseus dance before my eyes,

Epilogue
And as with each visit this apartment is less and less my own, stranger and more unfathomable become the recollections of when, in distant memory, it once felt as a gilded cage.

-A