There’s a tree outside the bus window at the stop on NE 15th and Broadway. It’s tall, long trunked, with millions of tiny flowers in the canopy hanging over the bus. The rain is falling in large teardrops, and the ground is covered with tiny pinkish white petals the size of a pea. I look at the side walk, covered in petals taken down by the rain. I sigh (like I do) for the millions of miniature signs of spring drowned so evidently. As my eyes soften and settle, I begin to see raindrops which are white; drops that harvested a petal on their way to the ground. Then I see the petals dancing. They bounce off the payment as they are released from the viscous tension of the raindrop. They dance, and I am surprised.
When I stop worrying, when I force aside all the culturally established, preassumptive notions about what my relationships are supposed to look like, and how I am supposed to behave… when I breathe and still my mind and focus on you, I realize there is something effortless in our friendship. I’m caught, for awhile, for however long, in the tension that you and I live within. And those moments when the tension breaks and I find surprising things that make me laugh and smile like petals dancing on pavement in the rain.