Empty

The temperature this morning hovered at freezing as I walked to the office, and campus foot traffic was absent. I passed a hedge, defoliated for the winter, a collection of brown twigs protruding from the ground. It was making a strange noise; the plants sounded like a water fountain. No one else was walking by to corroborate my observation.

I stopped and listened for awhile. Light hailstones, or perhaps heavy snowflakes, were falling. As they hit the hedge, they ricocheted down the branches and made a soft pitter-patter rattling sound -- which I had mistaken for water drops falling into a pool.

The hail made no sound when it hit anything else: pavement, sidewalk, cars, me. I trudged off, across the salted ground and the lumpy frozen mud, denuded of grass. When I got to the office, it was empty of people, and light, and (mostly) heat.

This suits my mood.


This post's theme word is elacrymate, "to emit as tears." Elizabeth elacrymated her excessive emotions.