Of Cracks and Spills...

覆水難收

Fù shuǐ nán shōu

 Water once spilt is not easily retrieved.

⚜

 A glass is overturned. 

Not by plot or scheme, but by accident. Accident. A sonorous clang; the glass rolls over to the other side of the room. A moment of tranquil anticipation. 

The water is malicious. It writhes where it is, it scorns the places it will go to. Trickles farther and farther and farther away. No one stops the flowing water. It goes where it pleases.

There was a pattern on the floor, I reckon. It had its curves, which marked the diaspora well. Water on marble, marble on water... Intersecting lines, parallel ones...Blobs and marks and scratches and spots... Hell and death and heaven and earth. I do not remember... 

A ray alighted on the nefarious business. I saw the pattern distort, the perfect perpendiculars shift a degree or two on the water's surface. Refraction. They taught us.

Deviation in the path of light when it travels from one medium to another.

Deviation in the path of rights when they morph in one situation, then in another.

I see a woman too, through the water. She stands there listlessly. I do not know what she thought then. Did she see the cracks as plainly as I did? I know not. Did she see the one on the wall behind her, which, when pinched together in the puddle's reflection, looked almost like an ugly scrawl in a formed hand... A man's signature...

She sweeps the floor silently. The cloth drinks the water greedily, leaving only dregs to dry behind it, as marks and blobs and scratches and spots.

After all, water once split is not retrieved...easily.