Rain God

 

 

“I feel incomplete,” he says to me, “and I don't think I'll ever feel whole until I find my other half.”

“Don't you know that even if you find another to merge with, you still won't be whole?”

“You don't actually believe that nonsense, do you?”

“I do,” I say. “If everyone here united as one, we would still only be a fraction of what we could be. We would still feel something missing deep within our souls.”

“And you have all the answers, do you? Where we come from, why we're here?”

“I do,” I say. “The Holy Word tells us that life is a cycle. We are here to help others grow, to bring life into the world. We sink to the earth, we rise to the heavens, we return to earth again.”

I brush off his skepticism.

“We think we are individuals, unique and singular, but we're composed of millions of tiny little molecules. This is a pattern for everything, for as we are made of microscopic bits of matter, we too collectively make up a much larger whole which we shall return to one day, and there are those who believe that larger whole is part of a much larger whole which is in turn just one building block in a much larger universe.”

“How can someone so smart believe in the ocean?” he asks.

I want to protest, but a sudden gust of wind pushes him into me. There's a brief moment of resistance as our boundaries press against each other. Then they collapse and we rush into each other. There is a moment of confusion as our personalities swirl amongst the other, exchanging doubts and fears and beliefs, bonding and becoming one, a new being born of the old.

I look around unsure of what I know. I want to believe, but there's an emptiness inside me, and I look around for someone to complete me, to be my other half and fill that missing part.

- Originally mailed to W. Murphree of Rosenberg, Texas