The author remains in retirement, but this tiny thought, written two years ago, asked permission to blink into the sun. The author relented.
Streaks In Absentia
He can always tell when her thoughts sink into metaphors.
Which explains why he abandons the room. There is hardly space for both he and her contemplation. So practical a woman, it seems unlikely that she'd be captured by fanciful theory, but there must be something, some quality in her eyes, that announces when she's tripped over reality and fallen into ...
…the fault of raindrops.
It is an exodus from the atmosphere. Heaven's sweat arrives in torrents that yet manage to conceive individuals. A downpour is not the murder of identity; though precipitation is thrown at her windowed world at cruel velocity, the self lost in the mass regains a hold on self again.
She, sheltered by his more nurturing walls and the overall more-ness they persistently promise, watches the weather because the alternative leads to trouble.
Her face has borrowed lines from the reflections. Streaks in absentia.
A single drop leaves a trail behind, gifting something of itself to the next. Shedding residue. And yet the drop is no less whole upon reaching the sill. Not that the shape and weight is verifiable. How does one measure the beginning and the end?
His smirk would kill her comparisons.
A survival mechanism, perhaps; water's instinct to pick up the remains of its predecessors. Wisdom comes this way. The resulting drop, in the end, is only more whole for the collection of absorbed parts.
She will pause, consider the man ghosting in the next room. And know such acquisition is destiny's maternal side. She'd acquired his humor as her own. Then his heart. The latter is the greater gift. And he took the greater hit, freeing her from melancholy by absorbing the defect. Scattering her worst from her grasp buffed a shine onto his more jagged facets. His acts are too often impetuous and mostly valiant. Never repentant but as cleansing as the deluge.
Their rate of amalgamation stands as a marvel.
A finger traces a random proof of a journey chosen. How can she judge one against another? Sliding to the left or right, joining the molecules of this drop and that. Who might condemn a drop its path? And how much can one drop alter its path? The streaks before her give no evidence of success against gravity. No horizontal tides. No northbound endeavors.
Eventually, the bright and heat will come to evaporate the choices away. Vapor to mist and back to rain against this very window.
For now, there are too many trails for the eye to track. If humans are as raindrops, could this be why God cannot always answer? Can every descent be cataloged? Perhaps mankind seeks more than any sensible deity can provide. Is there life away from the window?
He asks the same. And because she has drowned before, has screamed and slapped at the oppression, her answer accepts his more and contributes heartily to heaven's sweat.
Perhaps evaporation is a welcome liftoff into exhilarating flight.