As The June Light Turns To Moonlight

The pitter patter of tiny feet. Or the pitter patter of the rain. It taps, this thing, somewhere in the background, threatening to make things never quite the same.

His wife complains about the ticking of the clock. It has been there for some years, that clock, on the mantelpiece, ticking away, and for years his wife has complained about it. I make a point, he says, of winding the clock up because I know it winds you up. Overcoming the urge to take the clock and break the clock, preferably over his head, she leaves the room. She retreats, is the word she often uses to her friends, to the safety, as she often thinks of it, of the kitchen. And yet it’s still there, for both of them, even in their separate rooms, that pitter patter of either tiny feet or of the rain.

The following morning and their modest garden, all trimmed lawn, tiny flowers and teracotta thingies, is awash with flood. Gone are the tiny flowers. Destroyed, maybe, the lawn. She is at the kitchen window looking into the garden. From our outside vantage point, peering above a teracotta thingy, we cannot tell whether tears are rolling down her cheeks or whether those tears are, in fact, rain drops trickling along the glass. If tears, her response is a tad excessive. The garden will recover, after all.