The Rain Was Doing Something, So We Let It

April twenty-second. The rain couldn't make up its mind, which meant neither could we.

We'd meant to do something else, or not meant to, exactly, but there had been a loose plan involving a different street and a dry one. Then the first drops came in sideways and we turned under the nearest awning and that was that. The café had two tables free outside under cover, and Simone chose the one closest to the railing without discussing it, and I sat across from her, and at some point both of us stopped pretending we had anywhere to be.

It rained. Then it didn't. Then it did something between the two, that light uncertain version where you can't tell if the pavement is wet from new rain or just remembering the old. Simone watched the street the way she watches things at open studio, with the particular attention of someone who has decided not to rush the conclusion. I drank most of a coffee I don't remember ordering and looked at a puddle near the gutter that was doing a better job of reflecting the sky than the sky was.

mid-sentence, rain incoming again

I wrote nothing down that afternoon. No draft-folder sentence, no half-formed observation. Just the wet railing and the smell of it and Simone saying something at one point that made me laugh, and the rain starting again right when we'd almost decided it was over. I thought about the class she mentioned, the noun she named at the last session, the one I've been quietly sitting with since, but I didn't bring it up. Some things are still in the lag. The weather had the right idea: no conclusion required.

the puddle was better than the sky