After Rain

It’s been pouring for a week. My shoes and trousers caked with wet sand. The clothes I washed 4 days ago still hanging-- wearily waiting to dry.

School opened again this week. Students shiver in damp classrooms. The teachers sip tea and go home early.

Quiet village.
Empty roads.
Sullen cattle.
Lethargy.
Darkness.


I wait too. Hugging a hot water bottle. Bundled in the few clothes and blankets that still remain inside my bare, little house.

and counting. 25… 23…

Today is 18. Two and a half weeks to go. Restless, if not impatient.


At 5:00 tonight the light changes. A golden streak climbs inside the window pane and rests there. Staring at me. Waiting for me to notice.

Grey breaks.

I go outside to see sunrays softening the horizon. The kids playing. Laughter. The neighbor’s humming. A rising moon. Laundry ballet. Donkey cart rattle. Far off bar music. Smoke. Footprints. Crickets. Life leaking back in tiny shards of color and sound.


Will I be still like this? Will I be able to hear? Will the light wait for me? Will I catch it? Any of it?

18 ahead.

744 behind.

What lessons do we take from time and distance and difference and poverty and solitude and quiet and space? What do we leave? Forget?

My most profound moments are wrapped inside interludes. Inarticulable:

the air between people. the background of photos. the aftermath of rain.

and of all the other
irrelevant,
significant
seconds

that have made this so much larger than ‘an experience’.