I feel her coming closer. She’s not really a she, but I think of her that way. She makes me think of her that way. Dream of her that way. All those nights I’ve woken, sweat pricking thirsty lips, and rushed to my twelfth-floor balcony. Certain that this time, she’ll come.
Of course, she could choose a less poetic reappearance. It might not be from the sky. Her race, if you could call it that, shape-shift effortlessly. Evaporation, condensation, precipitation. Hard words for a third-grader, but I treasured them more than my Littles dolls. That syllabic string told me I wasn’t making her up. Cycles and cycles ago, she was part of me. One day, she’d return. When I needed her most.
What do I know about her? When she left, she was 99 percent water. The other 1 percent swarmed with minerals: sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, hints of zinc and copper. Lactic acid and yes, urea. All that in the drop of sweat trickling down my leg as I squatted, crooning forest healers into my palm. Lapacho, cordoncillo, tawari, canelilla. Sangre de drago, which also meant dragon’s blood in our older tongue, that I can’t quite remember. Aeons before the Spanish, we were there. I was there, a reservoir of forgotten knowledge.
I don’t ask for all of it back. Just that one drop, cleansed of its residue. The iota of the woman I was will comfort me. Yes, millions thirst in war-made deserts. Yes, floods sweep other millions away. You luckier ones scourged by autophagy: what can we do? Nothing.
For the thousandth time, I lean over the balcony, gather rain in a teacup. Plink. I feel her slipping in.
Never nothing, she murmurs. There’s always something. Make your one drop count.
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