"After it rains," explains her daughter, "the sun comes out." The girl spreads her arms wide, signifying the reach, depth and, somehow, yellow warmth of the sun. "And it evaporates all the water with..." she squints, "with condemnation?"
"That's not quite the right word," her mother says. Clutching her daughter's hand, the mother pulls her close while drizzle blackens the parking lot. They walk past your dad and make the tiles squeak in the grocery store.
Your dad hears that phrase. In his head when writing. "That's not quite the right word." It's only half-correcting. It's no answer at all, really.
Your dad places his thumbs on the puzzle-pieces -- the words -- and slides one up and to the left, down and to the right. Always one part of speech, one missing turn of phrase to fill in every square of that sliding puzzle, pitting the pieces corner to corner, immobile should he let it. Should he fail and let it happen.
A man shuffles past, hand clutching at his collar. Your dad lifts his chin to the rain, a thousand cold little points tap his face, like Lilliputian arrows on the attack.
Sometimes your dad holds the words at arm's length, staring as the paragraph pushes itself into a Rubik's Cube. There's no solving it for him now. When it was still a sliding puzzle it had already pulled at the quicks of his thumbs, the underneaths of his fingernails red, like they used to get in high school lifting the heavy, sliding lock of his locker after science, after math, after history, after English.
Your dad turns his palms forward and up. A thousand cold little points tap his fingertips, like he's moving through the universe. Through it at light speed. The sun is out, but it's way over there, no condemnation in its reach, breadth, or color.
