The girl appears only when the rain is heavy enough to blur the world into watercolor.
Tonight, the window glass is banded with rivulets, each drop catching the streetlight like a trembling star. Through them, she stands on the opposite balcony—pale coat, bare ankles, hair slicked to her cheeks. Not moving. Not waving. Simply watching.
I tell myself she’s a neighbor I’ve never met. A trick of light. A reflection that doesn’t belong to me.
But when I lift my hand, she does not mimic the motion. When thunder rolls, she tilts her head as though listening for a name she once knew. And when lightning cracks open the sky, for a breathless instant the rain clears—and she is suddenly close, her face pressed to the other side of my window, eyes wide with some urgent, impossible plea.
I stumble back.
The water runs down again, washing her features into streaks, then into suggestion, then into nothing at all.
By the time the storm ends, the glass holds only my own trembling reflection.
Therapy Bits 
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