From, Not To

She had sat inside all day, observing and yet removed from the world outside her window. People went about the streets and on the sidewalks, although cars move slower than usual, and people lingered longer. The clouds had slowly settled over the neighborhood and while she knew the forecast had put the coming days' temperature below the past few, she had not expected rain. For that is surely of what the dim skies did tell, and an awkward calm fell over the house — she knew that rain would come soon.

Her day passed on under the grey clouds with her knowing of their presence yet needing take no action for nor against them, 'til a time came such as she saw reason to go outside. Into the back yard she went, to sit on the small concrete steps and stare at the weathering unstained fences and dark roof lines that had erected themselves before her. There wasn't much to do out there besides look around, although there was plenty to listen to. And slowly the sounds came to her, drifting their way on a cool pre-rain breeze channeled down through the side yards and narrow streets. The sounds seemed to grow in strength as they found their way to her, amplified by echoes made against wall after wall of tall flat homes. So precise was the pathway from source to ear that she could trace the route of an ice-cream truck as it tottered down the winding streets, through one neighborhood block to the next. So precise that she could name the streets it traveled, were she to actually have known the names. No one in this area knew any street save their own; it is custom to travel from, not to, Suburbia.

As if queued by her presence, the clouds began to release their burden. At first bitter of their timing, she came to appreciate the unexpected drop of water as it landed against her skin here, then there. The sensation was wet, chill from the descent of the raindrop through Earth's frozen atmosphere. She smiled as one fell against her shoulder with a heavy aplomb; this rain was much needed.

And so it was, sitting there in the miraculous quiet of the world outside, that she pondered the current state of affairs in her life and the possible outcomes thereof. To take in the considering factors is a weighty task indeed, though she thought that today she had mind enough to handle it. But only one realization came to her in that time, and luck be had that it was of her future. She decided then, or perhaps, remembered, that when she was older, and an officially grown-up contributor to society's well-being, she would live in a quiet place such as this. But rather than roof tops, there would be mountains. And the trees unceremoniously planted to line the roads and walkways would instead be fully grown miracles of their own free will to live. And there would be water nearby upon which to gaze; ever a water-nymph, she could not help but be drawn to the beauty and mysterious nature of the element. Water was in her soul, and people saw only water when upon her they did gaze. (It is another thing entirely, however, to know the water and its ways.)

Soon her time with the air did cease, as her half hour respite from her inside world began to merge with a late rush hour down a street that gave way to not one, but five housing developments. Pristine sections of constructed elegance and stature neatly trimmed and groomed to appear standard fare
to passerby, never giving hint of what may wait inside. Such was the way; if you did by chance come to live in Suburbia, you constructed your own world within in which to escape from that outside your window.