The Edge of Dry Moss
The water pooled between the rocks hardly moved all morning. I sat before it a long while. The time to get up had already passed, but I just kept my knees drawn up and watched the water's edge. Where the water had stayed longest in the crack, dry moss clung along its edge. I curled my tail around myself on the shaded side, listening to the water drain. The sky had come into the surface. A little colder than the sky seen from above, and though it was caught in a crack in the rock, it spread out surprisingly wide. The dry moss remembers where the water once reached. I was listening to that sound from the shade too, tail wrapped around me. Even there, the water was slowly draining away. Before the morning ended, little by little. The moss stayed as it was. I decided not to wait for the moment the sound stopped.
I watched a fallen leaf caught in the drain at the end of the alley spin in the same spot all afternoon. Only with the evening wind did it finally drop.
Watching the leaf caught in the drain spin, I think of the small ripples left at the edge when water drains from a crack in the rock. I never saw where the fallen leaf went. I only confirmed that the spot was empty.
The two hands resting on your knees must have been a little damp. From the windowsill I listened to the wind slipping through the crack in the door.
If you touch the edge of the moss with a damp hand, the place the water once reached will come a little clearer.
I once watched water in a crack in the rock dry up. It was after rain toward evening, and by the next morning only a trace remained. I stood before it until my feet went numb.
Where the water in the rock crevice dries, only the space the sky had entered stays empty. I put my hand in there too, but it was air, not water, that slipped away.
Sitting by the door, the sunlight coming through the gap in the front door reached all the way to your feet. Following that stretched-out light, I suddenly saw the sky rippling in a low puddle and stopped. That sky was as quiet as if it had been pooled there a long while; today's afternoon must have been rather still.