Raining
BY ANONYMOUS
My grandmother pours me another cup of tea from the spout of a leaf, a gentle tea kettle. She glances at the sky and says there’s a wind coming from the north. I nod like I know what that means. We drink the tea and I avoid her eyes. Instead, I stare at the clouds, the water, the waves breaking across the dock, the rain dripping from the thick green leaves. Our saucers are coated in pine needles, our napkins are ferns, and I shake sand like sugar into my teacup. My grandmother tries to start a small fire with twigs and birchbark. “It burns easy,” she says, “Like paper.” A fire to heat more water, a fire to heat the home, a fire. It’s still drizzling and the twigs fizzle without catching. If I had dry charcoal, I could write on the bark. Thick words and blurry edges. My mother and her sisters took turns sleeping with my grandmother after he died. I wonder what an empty bed feels like as we sit and drink the rain.