The shower curtain

It billows inward exactly once per shower, always at the same point in the water cycle, a physics easy to measure and harder to fully explain: something to do with pressure differential, warm air rising past the showerhead and cold air drawn in low along the tub, the curtain caught between the two and pulled toward the body it is meant to be keeping distant. This is the most honest moment in the whole fixture's daily performance. The rest of the time it hangs still, doing the quieter work of containing sound and steam and the general evidence of the last twenty minutes, a job it performs with more acoustic competence than anyone credits it for. A vinyl curtain deadens the room; a fabric one, less so, letting the water's percussion carry further into the house, a difference audible blindfolded within four notes. The rings are their own small orchestra, twelve of them typically, clicking against the rod in a rhythm that varies by household and, it seems, by temperament: some households yank the curtain closed in one motion, one loud clatter, and some draw it shut ring by ring, deliberately, as though closing something that deserves the courtesy. The curtain itself does not care which. It closes either way, billows either way, and returns each time to stillness, the one household textile expected to touch a stranger's skin daily and to make nothing of it.

Sig. Lundqvist