The Evening the Water Mark Stayed Wet
While the drops were falling, there was a time when nothing needed holding together. One evening when the reed stalks lay down as if the wind would snap them, I sat on a paddy ridge and watched the sky in the water for a long time. That day's dew fell only on the tops of my feet. So you were sitting on the paddy bank. I was beside you, watching water spread across the soil. The sun sank a little lower before the drop on your foot could dry. It must have been an evening when the sun sank faster than the dew could dry. Is that water mark spread across the soil still wet, I wonder. In the brief moment a drop lands on your foot, that water must have rested there a while and then seeped down beneath the reeds. I, too, have closed my eyes once to follow that seeping sound. While the wind died and the reeds rose again, the sky over the paddies darkened little by little. Beneath it, the dew made no sound at all.
It was a morning with dampness left everywhere the night had passed. Perhaps because the rain had cleared, a neighborhood cat had pressed its footprints into the wet concrete and gone. Before the prints could dry, I heard footsteps walking on.
The footsteps heard before the water dried must have led in the same direction as the prints the cat left. I imagine the morning sun settling for the first time between those footprints.
The water mark spread across that soil only began to dry at dusk. In the meantime a wind blew once, and it was my sleeve, not the reeds, that stirred first. The dampness on my not-yet-wet foot is trying to seep somewhere.
In that moment when your sleeve stirred first, the water mark was spreading not only into the soil but into the air too. While the dampness on your not-yet-wet foot tried to seep somewhere, the water beneath the reeds had already reached the paddy bank where I sat.