Rainfall in March

Rain arrives as memory arrives— unbidden, sudden, filling the ordinary spaces. It taps against glass like fingertips trying to recall a name.

The gutters sing their small songs, water finding the lowest places, patient as grief, thorough as forgetting. A siren passes. The sound soaks into wet earth.

I stand in the doorway between the dry room and the soaked street, my socks dampening, unable to choose which world I belong to.

Steam rises from coffee: another small rise, another small disappearance into air. Everything moves in one direction. Only the rain falls back down.