The Water Comes and Goes (chapter of a novel)

The sky has stopped its raining today. And we are walking further and further away from the creations of people, though in this day, it gets harder and harder to escape. The trees shake their heads, whispering to us about those days when they could live at peace amongst their own kind and breathe the air which they had created.

Averice avoids the puddles because he is grown-up like that sometimes, but I jump right in and laugh. There is no point in being scared of getting wet, because it always dries. And it is like taking a bath. After awhile, Averice is getting jealous of my fun and he joins me, walking in with his head dignified at first and pretending that this was too below him, but soon it is too hard to resist and we are dancing through the water.

When we are tired, we sit down on the curb. The lady in the big house across the street shuts the curtains so we can’t see her. But it doesn’t help, because I already know all I need to know about her.

The puddle in front of me looks refreshing and I take off my shoes so I can rest my bare feet in it. It is cold, but not a winter cold, so I stay. The surface of the water forms circles and shimmers, and I can see an image of what others see of me floating there, on top of the black concrete.

She is ugly.

The people who have told me so are right.

But I am not.

Beautiful, beautiful I am, as I sit there underneath the living sky and on this living rock. The water below me looks still, but I know that it will go. Like the feelings we get when people tell us we are ugly, inside and out. We can see it now, and it feels so. She is ugly, of course. But water comes and goes. The puddles get smaller and smaller, until they disappear. And when they rain down again, they bring something new. New people, new voices.

This puddle might show an ugly, ragged woman.

I wait for the next.