Becoming a Current
The bus stop was little more than a single sign reading City Bus Stop and three cement benches. Normally the benches would be filled with people, many more standing nearby.
Today, only one man sat, hunched on a bench, writing furtively on a piece of white paper, using his knee as a desk.
The rest of the crowd waited under the awning of a building two hundred feet away, watching the rain turn the streets into rivers.
Everyone watched the man, soaked through, oblivious. Some glanced at each other, searching silently for answers in the faces around them. Others looked down, embarrassed.
For a long time, the man’s paper and pen had stayed sealed inside a plastic bag tucked in his coat’s inner pocket.
He had simply sat, letting the water seep through his layers of clothing, through his hair, now dripping into his eyes.
He tucked the hair behind his ears, pulled the bag from his pocket, and emptied its contents onto his lap.
He immediately began writing:
It is raining, and my anger comes from the fact that rain cannot be more wet — that it cannot soak through my skin to my lungs and drown me as I sit here. I would fall over and finally stop breathing. People would come to see what was wrong. The autopsy would reveal drowning, and this would be seen as impossible. That will be my first and final triumph.
As he scrawled the last words, the paper disintegrated in his hands, the soaked sheet pulled apart by the falling rain.
Shreds clung to his knee, and he watched as the rain washed away the ink.
He began to cry.
His tears mixed with the rainwater on his face, until even he could no longer tell which drops were his own.
The bus arrived, water leaping from its tires.
The crowd broke from the awning and hurried past him.
Some looked down at him as they passed; most kept their eyes on their feet.
He remained on the bench, feeling the warm tears join the cold rain, streaming down his face in rivulets and waterfalls, falling onto the shredded paper at his feet — the last fragile remnants, not yet washed away.