Feast

That constellation you have hidden in your heart. That latticework in which you hold a child's love.

May the light always be.

A Memory

That brief silence when the incessant rain pants and sprawls itself on leaves and roofs for just one instant, revealing the sounds of the city - a bike's horn, a lorry's rumble - that moment - does it have a name?

I remember such a rain from years ago. I was then living in an apartment with red floor tiles and a red-accented wall in every room. It had 3 small patios - one opened to the city's rising face - a flyover under construction (still is), another to a small, grassy playground (the boys and the football in the mornings; the buffaloes and the shepherd in the afternoons) and the third, to the courtyard of a small house surrounded by trees (yellow flowers in the Spring; later, they cut down the trees, sold the land and moved away).

And when it began raining, it rained for days in a slow dance to an even slower song. Turning in for the night, I would wonder if, by morning, I would be cut off from the rest of the world, as the waters rose all around. I would dread the sound of each droplet - yet they together would form a lullaby as I drifted off to sleep.

If I close my eyes now, I can still feel the way the rain crept into that apartment - hanging just above the floor tiles, swirling around the front door's steel handle, simmering in the pots and pans in the kitchen.