Covenant

When we went to bed, it had just started to rain. The rain was so soft it barely grazed the windows. The windows turned to night and night turned into a heavy rain. Then the rain pounded our windows, and our windows gave way to fresh air. The fresh air smelled of wet forest, grass, and rotting flowers. The flowers drooped and fell into the river that had just been born. Born after 40 days of rain, the rain bulked into clouds, the clouds hovering above the trees like fat bees bouncing off our windows, swarming our hive, our hive floating toward the rainbow, the rainbow a promise of what? We didn’t know.

Trail of Ice

When my best friend died, the lake froze. The birds disappeared. I walked alone for hours a day, breathing my own clouds. I felt his arm around my shoulder like a phantom limb. He still talked to me, but only now his voice was in my head, repeating the same phrases I had heard him say so many times. I just kept walking until the sidewalk ended, then the street, then the town, and I  was in an open field, the wide cold sky above me—a trail of ice shining above the stubbled grass. There were holes everywhere my mind couldn’t fill.