MATCHSTICKS
This little droplet was no different from its peers in any of the ways that mattered; its shape and form and size were unremarkable amongst the great falling masses, and as it detached itself from the cloud’s soft white embrace, it could not know its fate. The air swam up, and, all around, the drops were shattered into parts. But this little droplet kept its form and rushed, enthusiastic, downwards, in cold exuberance. Warmth grew in angry steps, and blurred shapes emerged sharp and vivid beneath. Soon the little droplet was bristling with the new-found heat and, lost in memories of rivers and seas, regretted leaving the blankets of the clouds. But gravity denied a return, and insisted forms grew into objects; a great greyness became a patchwork of shades, with dark networks bursting limply out from brick matchstick boxes all organised in lines.They were lines that turned and crossed and sliced and blotted into the horizon, for they refused to cease, with the tiled boxes obediently following their current. Sharpening, this magnificent cobweb - of geometric shapes and slowly shifting sliding stopping tones - drew into overwhelming focus. With a little crack and a scream and a splintering the drop shattered apart on a head, and in dismay this head turned its face upwards to the clouds. This was Leonard, and he felt - like a volley of arrows - the smattering of rain, and a frown burst upon his sunless face. He sat on the pavement by the side of the road, backed up uncomfortably against a garden fence. It was not scheduled, this stop, or part of Leonard’s normal routine. Instead it was one of those perfectly calculated actions that defy the normal structure of a day, that are born out of a sadness, only cured by the definite and pitying attention of all those who could offer it. It was a planned recklessness, a pre-imagined spontaneity of sorrow.
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