Drops That Fell Beneath an Umbrella
The day is long today. On a street I usually pass without a thought, someone's voice came back to me, and in that moment, why was I smiling? That night, on a bus past midnight, I suddenly looked up. The streetlights outside were smeared across the rainwater, and a wet umbrella hanging from the handle beside the seat was quietly dripping. Every time the bus stopped, that sound was unusually clear. Those drops had nowhere to land. Listening to the sound of those drops, I don't know how long I stood there after the bus had gone that night. There was a time when only the weight of a wet umbrella remained at my fingertips.
There was a night the streetlight flickered above the stop after the bus had gone. As I walked with my umbrella folded in hand, water dripped from it. The sound followed me to the end of the road.
That night when the streetlight bled into the rain, I suddenly chose not to open my umbrella. The moment the rain touched my shoulders, its sound fell in step with my walking pace. Only where the road ended did the wet begin to dry, and for the first time the weight of a soaked umbrella looked light.