She saw droplets of water manifesting on her worn and weathered copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets like fragile glass beads. Emerging from the shelter of the willow, she rose and brought her face toward the dreary and grey sky, feeling the beads begin to fall on her own face and forearms. She started toward the long-worn path leading home, or the façade of home that houses seemed to convey. Rain always seemed to fall like a memory, slow, soft, glancing at first, soon showering tyrannically, drenching and drowning and choking those in it with good feelings from better times. The cold rain mixed with the warm air stirred up petrichor, which she had loved since she was a child. She remembered-- running outside to the sun and the smell of rain in her bare feet, dashing toward the swings, shouting gleefully-- but she stopped. Things weren't like that now. She paused suddenly in the middle of the path among the trees and slowly lowered herself to the ground, not caring about her old jeans worn soft by years or the mud or the fact that it was still raining. She brought her knees close to her chest, Shakespeare's Sonnets resting on the damp earth, and wished with all of her damned heart that things could stay the same.
