You wonder.

You wonder about the storm, wonder about the things it may have taken with it when it went away. The dust, the prayers, the hours, the night, the morning. You wonder about roofs, floors, houses. You wonder about children. You wonder about sadness.

You wonder about rain, trickling down glass windows, wonder about rain, whipping at shut doors.

You wonder about overflowing rivers, wonder about books and plastic cups washed away by flood, wonder about wet, shivering skin, about fear, helplessness, loss. You wonder about hope beneath a torrential rain, hope against the wind's merciless lashing, hope despite them.

You wonder about words--do you describe the wind as "howling", "roaring", or "wailing"? You wonder about meaning; you wonder about meaninglessness.

You wonder about the trees: some, uprooted and fallen, streaking the grey streets green; the others, leaning low against the sides of roads, nodding even as the air momentarily keeps still. You wonder about puddles.

You wonder about the blank look on people's faces as they walk under a drizzle, you wonder about their thoughts.

You wonder about darkness and light, wonder about the correct way to strike a match to light a candle, and how there is loveliness in the sound. You wonder how you can think of loveliness at a time like this.

You wonder why the sun shines the way it does right now. You wonder why you wonder.

You wonder what will come next.

You've been having dreams lately and, as you wonder about it now, you remember thinking about it some days ago, though which day it was, you don't remember. A line of words dances before your eyes: cease, seize, bees, sky, window. Another follows its tail: chair, smoke, bloom, tea, pavement.

The attempt to rationalize is quickly assaulted by the reprimand There is no pattern.

Mooning over this cup of coffee

The interminable tapeworm of time unreels
unwinds and stops dead.
-Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, "The Time Factor"

Where he is, my dad is currently building his fish pond. Miles away, sun-lovers are frolicking on beaches. Sundry, unknown distances separate me from the bibliophile chewing away at his book with a cup of coffee; from the little ones having snacks of milk and cookies; from the corporate dweller crunching away at data and gossip; from the mountain-climber trekking, inhaling the breeze of the outdoors. A butterfly is cooing, soundlessly, at a newly-opened blossom, and a puppy barks at a yellow moth, flitting by.

I wonder what twilight is like in other places. Where I am, and in the places I've been, it is almost always sad.

What's it like, where you are?