precipitate

The old ones always said they could smell it in the soil, the change in weather, the phrasings of days. Outside, I smoke with cold fingers and a wet cough. I cast a tether towards the menace of darker clouds, coiling with the coming storm. I smell the earth, see the change in the rate of birds feeding startled into flight. The years bury me little by little in the business of the sky. Rain is always waiting, above these whispers and tides.

There is nothing to tell you, not a thing that I can find that you didn't learn of long ago. There is nothing at least that I could say, my language so weary and fraught with abuse. The world has its ways of getting its message across, the fruiting of hidden fungus, the clusters of birds just below the clouds. The world gathers its gossip and its lies and finds me when I stand still enough. I shiver in the flux of weather, the chill and the sunlight, the rush of silence just before the rain. I watch the rain spill towards this idle invite.

It seems like magic, the thought first then the thing. It seems that way as the habits of the world grow familiar, trampling the world with beasts and signs. Wait long enough and the bus will stop. Wait long enough, and most anything is possible. The slight of hand that perception moves us, skipping us ahead of deft sequence, turning the light inside out. Watch long enough, the pattern will play out. Watch near enough, the rain will come the moment you call. This neat end, this fated kiss.