In the bathroom, you step on a razor blade carelessly left on the bathroom floor. You don’t feel it until you take a few steps when realizing it is stuck to your heel.

The blood is a thin red line, seeping languidly like a romantic river that evokes a childhood memory that isn’t so innocent when you remember when older. At that moment of clarity, you fall into sadness, linking those feelings to those specific aspects of your personality, such as an introvert overload, particularly at family gatherings and parties with strangers become apparently real.

You bend to take the five-bladed razor from your foot and toss it into the wastebasket.

You pull a couple of sheets from the toilet paper roll to clean the blood seeping out.

You take a bath, absorbing the heat. The sound of the rushing water delivers solace.

You spend a long time in the tub. The apartment has the advantage of unlimited hot water, allowing you to relax and forget.

After drying, you put on a small bandage. The cut does not hurt.

You feel nothing.

You dress. Socks and underwear first, black trousers next.

You choose a shirt, a black checked button-down given as a gift by someone you learned later you really never knew, and yank it from the hanger.

Shoes last. The choice is how much do you want to walk. If for a few hours, then it’s the Oxfords a half-size too big. They handle pavement well. If for style, and at the café where everyone judges you by the clothes you wear, then perhaps the red-soled Cole-Hahns.

You choose the Oxfords.

The blood does not seem to flow during the process of forgetting what the razor had conjured.

But you sense the wound as you walk out the door.