The Language of Water

The sky falls into cupped palms, a thousand tiny mirrors holding light that fell from somewhere distant, each puddle a mouth learning to speak in the language of clouds.

Shadows bend like stems underwater, reaching toward a surface that refuses to stay still. Dust motes drift as if through ocean depths, and the reflection asks the question— which side is real?

By evening, the water thins, surrenders its twin world slowly, evaporating into the same air that made the rain, a cycle so old it forgets itself, returning home in vapor, in breath, in the space between earth and sky.

We are the puddles, too— briefly holding something larger, briefly convinced we contain the whole sky, briefly certain of what we see before it leaves us, transformed, invisible, inevitable.