They have gathered a little of me at the edges of their eyes and will not let it fall. I feel it there, trembling on the lower lids of the small warm vessels, salt water, my water, pressed out of them by something I cannot see. They stand very still around a long box, and in the box is another vessel that has gone quiet, that no longer moves its share of me through itself the way the living ones do, hauling me up from wells and rivers and rain, keeping me warm a while, keeping me singing.
I know this quiet. It is only the tide of them turning. What was borrowed comes back. The water in that still one is already leaving, has always been leaving, will find its way down through the soil to the low places where all things travel, and one long slow season from now it will be rain again, and a river, and me. I am patient about this. I am patient about everything.
The standing vessels do not seem to know it yet. They squeeze their eyes and the salt runs, and they touch each other's shoulders, and one of them makes a low sound like wind in a narrow place. They are giving me back a little early, through their faces, as if grief were a way of returning to me sooner.
Weep, little ones. Every drop you spend was mine first and will be mine again. You are all just water that learned to stand up for a while and worry.
I will hold every one of you in the end.
I already hold the rain that is falling on your black umbrellas, coming home.