Footfall Procession, Rain Left

Some things the rain finishes for you. In the market, a tarp’s never your own—whoever left the last heel print, that’s the new owner, until the next downpour. Cloth, once it’s let go of its market smell, picks up the studio’s mildew; you think you can tell one stain from another, but under a certain light every patch tells a story you didn’t write. I found flag fragments matted in the gutter by the shrine—some lettered, most just color, all sagged from procession and neglect. Rope from the heap, knotted where it failed to hold last week’s awning. The bowl shards—half-holding, half-listening—hang like parenthesis for what’s spilled. My hands just assemble, the weather edits. That’s the spillover, the agreement. There’s always a footprint you can’t own and a vessel tilting, sagging from one end. I let the damp set the rhythm—let gravity and rot make the last decision. What costs: letting the work walk away, a little less yours, a little more everybody else’s.