Rain

Today, it is dew that you awaken to, a morning wrapped in cloud, soft notes from some distant music. Yesterday's weather report said it will rain today, and you are certain it will. All signs point at raindrops, sing of wetness, hint at fluid things. The yielding heart, yielding to forgotten days. Time slipping by hands that can barely hold. Tears.

Your consciousness still shakes at the (fragmented) memory of a strange dream. There is no sense in piecing the shards together, but you allow yourself--for a few moments--to waft in that barely perceptible line between sleep and wakefulness.

But broken things get lost in the language of the everyday.

And soon, rain, its drops hitting the roofs, the windows, the grounds, soft patter on hard surfaces, prying open what will yield, permeating what will not; washing away the dust, brightening the weariness; so that what was dull soon sparkles, what was withering gets revived.

You understand this: there is reason for the stillness in the day before; you, who have long believed that always, always, there are (heavy) things suspended in the unmoving air. You are grateful. You have been taught that what has gone is gone, and today is here, now.

(In a parallel universe, things may be different; but all the same, it is there, not here.)

In the distance, a door shuts. Tonight, the moon will be her usual, lovely self, and you remind yourself to notice.

Notes for a story

--In the swell of evening,

all is space and more space.

Crickets go darting the night

to alliterate a face. They scree

a name there are only broken

vowels for, broken words,

broken music. Absence,

- Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, Burning Houses

In my heart, a foreshadowing. In my heart, a premonition. In my heart, a question, unasked. In my heart, a heart, sinking.

This evening, this book. This evening, its unassuming spine caught my eye. I wasn't looking for it; I had long stopped looking for it.

Now, my finger traces this book's cover. I leaf through its pages. I allow my eyes to linger along its lines, parsed into shorter lines. I allow my eyes--but only for a while. Holding this thin volume is both uplifting and heartbreaking. Bittersweet, extremely so. Opening it felt a little like sacrilege. How precious our friendship is. How fragile. It rests on the hinges of you and I. I break a little, grasping it.

You had once told me, smiling and sad, how you could never seem to win the race against things that find their way to me. I trail, too, dear one. But you already know this.

I think of this book, at rest in your shelf. My heart breaks into little pieces.

I think of the conversations we had. I think of the conversations we never had. I think of the conversations we will never have. I think of your pain and the silence with which you cloak it. I think of your suffering and all the unnamed distances that separate me from it.

I think of the things you taught me--how to write a story, how to un-write a story. How does one write a story?

I am certain I will end up writing you a story--I have known this for a long time. I do not know how it begins; I only know how it will end.

In the story, this book will remain in your shelf.

My heart sinks.